I often think people don't know what to think of me, and in fact this is precisely the objective of many of my creations. Even back in the days with Lady Starlight, my original partner, we aimed to bemuse. This feeling of bemusement - it's neither good nor bad. It just is. Whether critics realize it or not, they've been in a very long argument since my public birth.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

I think it's absolutely a blessing when you just know what your purpose is and your destiny. I don't think it's a curse at all.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn't exist without the performance-art element.

I don't think that women need to smell interesting.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

I think there are different kinds of fame. There's fame which is plastic and about paparazzi and money and being rich, and then there's the fame, which is when no one knows who you are but everyone wants to know who you are.

Being a woman in the pop world, sexuality is half poison and half liberation. What's the line? I don't have a line. I am the most sexually free woman on the planet, and I genuinely am empowered from a very honest place by my sexuality. What's more primal than sex? I mean, it's so honest. If I didn't think I had the talent to back that up, I wouldn't have done it.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what's underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don't think it ever will be.