Quotes By Madonna Ciccone

I'm ambitious. But if I weren't as talented as I am ambitious, I would be a gross monstrosity.

People hear the soul, black influence in my voice. I grew up listening to CKLW and all the black stations like WLBS.

Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment.

I think the biggest reason I was able to express myself and not be intimidated was by not having a mother. For example, mothers teach you manners. And I absolutely did not learn any of those rules and regulations.

I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.

Things were a lot simpler in Detroit. I didn't care about anything but boyfriends.

I'm not interested in being Wonder Woman in the delivery room. Give me drugs.

I always thought I should be treated like a star.

I want to be like Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and John Lennon... but I want to stay alive.

Part of the reason I sort of shot out like a cannon out of Michigan and left home at such an early age is because I had to feel independent.

When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.

I grew up in a high school where it was very conservative, and I felt like people disapproved of me, and I felt like an outsider.

If I was a girl again, I would like to be like my fans, I would like to be like Madonna.

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere.

I really saw myself as the quintessential Cinderella. I think that's when I really thought about how I wanted to do something else and get away from all that.