Madonna Ciccone Quotes

Such honesty comes with a price, but when you get past the hurt and shock of realizing that you're faulted and frequently wrong, you also realize that you are really loved and respected for who you are, and you become a better person.

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

I was fine being in the closet at the beginning of my career because that's what you were supposed to be - until I realized that it didn't serve anybody, and I was left feeling utterly empty. This is who I am, so I've gotta be me.

Pippin chooses love and finds a greater sense of himself at the end of all the madness. I relate to him in many ways. I have been through stuff, thought I knew best, and often been proven wrong.

I decided at 15 that I didn't want to be one of those artists that gets up and sings love songs they don't mean. I decided that I was going to be me to the fullest extent, that my songs were going to reflect relationships I've had, things I've been through, and even the stuff I'm embarrassed about.

I would say that playing this character has caused me to think about a lot of things. He's always questioning himself and trying to get back to something he lost touch with and trying to find forgiveness. Everybody struggles with these things to some extent in their life.

We love in others what we lack in ourselves, and would be everything, but what we are.

The hardest situation to stay happy in, I think, is when you're trying to find love, and yourself at the same time. It just doesn't seem to fit well.

It's an interesting thing when you discover something about yourself. To go: 'Wow, I'm not the person I thought I was. I'm in the middle of something and I can't actually deal with it.'

I came to love, I came into my own.

I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be.

In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.

I have faced up to what I am.

I am excited to show people how, when you get older, you get deeper, you get more raw, you get more honest, and you stop pretending to be the person you think people want you to be. I stopped worrying about what people wanted me to say and just sort of dug deep into my personal arsenal of my mistakes and shameful thoughts.

The price of confessing is to be confronted with the truth of who you are - you have to bear your faults, your frailties.

Identity has been such an explosive territory for me... so hard, so painful at times.

When I started playing music, I was more of a character. Now I'm just me with a cool outfit on. I'm more comfortable being myself.

If I want to hide myself from my limitations, then I don't want to play this game.

Writing my first book, 'Beautiful,' was the time that I was able to write the truth of it - that I was despairing at times, that I got depressed and felt like I couldn't cope. Writing became about being honest.

Being honest to who I am led me to write 'If Our Love Is Wrong,' and that allowed me to fully realize the direction I should be heading to - human nature, real emotions, and issues about LGBT.

'Say It Loud' came from many, many small battles. From, 'I hate myself, and I hate this,' to, 'I love this, and it's my favorite thing...' to, 'This is the best thing in existence.'

It's so hard to know where you belong, ever. You have to be yourself and let yourself fall wherever you fall.

I felt like a failure for so long because I wasn't able to access myself in the way I knew I would have if I was going to make music that mattered. I knew I was going to have to learn how to be honest.

A conscience is a troublesome thing at times. I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning and I spent the time feeling what a nothing I was, and wishing I was so very different. Then the morning's post brought me a letter from a friend, saying I was so this, so that - it made me really cry, I was so grateful.

It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.