Madonna Quotes

96 Sourced Quotes

One must dare to show what he wants. You have to go and ask for things rather than wait for them to happen.

Madonna
I hate polite conversation. I hate it when people stand around and go, 'Hi, how are you?' I hate words that don't have any reason or meaning. Also I hate it when people smoke in elevators and closed in places. It's just so rude.
Answering the question 'What irritates you the most?'

Madonna
When you're writing something and you know it's good, you get flushed, you can feel the blood coursing through your veins, you feel alive, all your nerve endings stand up, something just clicks.

Madonna
Every time I do a show, I die a little bit, but no shit is worth doing unless you're willing to die for it.

Madonna
I became an overachiever to get approval from the world.

Madonna
I've gone from having a huge fan base to losing a huge fan base to having a kind of fluctuating fan base. I've always had a core of fans who've stuck by me but, depending on the kind of music I do, I end up appealing to certain groups of people and alienating others.

Madonna
I know the aspect of my personality, being the vixen, the heartbreaker and the incredibly provocative girl is a very marketable image, but it's not insincere. You just can't take it seriously.

Madonna
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl.

Madonna
People have this idea that if you're sexual and beautiful and provocative, then there's nothing else you could possibly offer.

Madonna
Everyone went out and bought Sex, it was sold out in two seconds. And then everybody slagged me off. That, to me is a statement of the hypocrisy of the world that we live in. The fact that everybody is so interested in sex but won't admit it.

Madonna
I wouldn't have turned out the way I was if I didn't have all those old-fashioned values to rebel against.

Madonna
The cross is a very powerful symbol and it symbolizes suffering, but it also is connected to a person who was loving and sharing and his message was about unconditional love. I tried to take a powerful image and use it to draw attention to a situation that needs attention. For me, we all need to be Jesus in our time. Jesus' message was to love your neighbor as yourself and these are people in need.

Madonna
Hey you! Don't be silly! Put a rubber on your willie!

Madonna
I could never be Queen Of America. I've pissed off too many people. I've got the queens of America on my side but other than that...

Madonna
I've always been kind of obsessed with Frida Kahlo, so I was really into the idea of getting something that belonged to her. And then from Frida Kahlo I found out about Tina Modotti and then I started collecting her stuff and Edward Weston, and one person always leads to another person with me, because for me it started with Diego Rivera, then it went to Frida Kahlo, then it went to Tina, and Edward and... Also, if you're into Picasso, and you want to find out about him and that whole area of art and European culture, then you start reading about Man Ray and the surrealists and Andre Breton, and all of a sudden you're in that whole world and you start having interests in other people. It's like a disease.

Madonna
I love horses. I think I may have been one of Henry VIII's knights in another life, riding through a great forest.

Madonna
I haven't got much time to waste
It's time to make my way
I'm not afraid of what I'll face
But I'm afraid to stay.

Madonna
Many people see Eva Peron as either a saint or the incarnation of Satan. That means I can definitely identify with her.

Madonna
There isn't a performer on earth that isn't an exhibitionist. There isn't any point in being in this business if you're not an exhibitionist. And, by the way, you can be an exhibitionist and be very shy as well.

Madonna
I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.

Madonna
Phallic symbols. You know Catholics. I used to draw people naked all the time in my art class and my nun teachers used to tell me I had to put clothes on them. So I just drew lines around their bodies. See-through clothes.

Madonna
I just like the idea of pills. I like to collect them but not actually take them. When I fell off my horse, I got tons of stuff: Demerol and Vicodin and Xanax and Valium and Oxycontin, which is supposed to be like heroin. And I'm quite scared to take them. I'm a control freak.

Madonna
I liked my body growing up and I wasn't ashamed of it. I liked boys and didn't feel inhibited by them. Maybe it comes from having brothers and sharing a bathroom. The boys got the wrong impression of me at high school. They mistook forwardness for promiscuity. When they don't get what they want, they turn on you. I went through this period when all the girls thought I was loose and the boys said I was a nymphomaniac. The first boy I ever slept with was my boyfriend and we'd been going out a long time.

Madonna
A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want.

Madonna
When I'm dead and no longer the threat. My comfort is that all the great artists since the beginning of time have always been completely misunderstood and never fully appreciated until they were dead.

Madonna
I think that life is a paradox and you have to embrace that in your work and your belief systems... you can't be a literalist, and that's the trouble that people always find themselves in. That's why people always hit a wall with any of my stuff, because you can't take it literally.

Madonna
If we can elect an African American as president, we can support gay marriage! Defeat prop 8! We will not give up!

Madonna
I pay attention to what's going on around me. I'm always looking for new energy, new talent, new voices. When you do that I think it's easier to come up with fresh ideas. It's not that my career has been based on surprising people, but it's been about challenging myself — to constantly do new things that are going to broaden my own mind and in the process, hopefully, connect with other people.

Madonna
I've read a couple of reviews that say I'm getting harder in my old age but I don't think that's true at all. I think that you can't help but become a little cynical about life and love but I'm still a romantic, I'm still an idealist.

Madonna
Because I've taken my clothes off in public doesn't mean that I've revealed every inch of my soul.

Madonna