Cyndi Lauper
I've always wondered what it would be like if somebody from outer space landed with three heads. Then all of a sudden everybody else wouldn't look so bad, huh? Well, OK you're a little different from me but, hey, ya got one head.Collection: Space
I lucked out when I started to sing. I'd already experienced failing at everything else.Collection: Chance
I don't have good business sense. You never get much money for the arts. But I like independence. I like to grow.Collection: Independence
God has more important things to worry about than who I sleep with.
There's ageism in everything. I don't give a hoot. It isn't what other people think; it's what you think. But it's hard to come to terms with getting older. I admire people like Vivienne Westwood.
If you saw me without makeup, you wouldn't recognize me.
You know, I do speak the Queens English. It's just the wrong Queens that's all. It's over the 59th Street Bridge. It's not over the Atlantic Ocean.
My music is about a joyful experience. I've learned that if you can affect other people, you should.
You always have to remember - no matter what you're told - that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.
The more you practice and study, the better you are... so I still practice and study all the time.
My mother said I was a little odd as a kid. I was alone a lot, but I didn't feel alone.
If you can't go one way, there's many ways to get where you're going. So you just take a step back and see beyond the wall.
Understand where it is you want to go. Then picture yourself there. If you can picture yourself there, then you can be there. Bottom line.
Men and women are different. I don't think men grow a brain until 26 or even 30. Girls mature a lot quicker.
When I perform on stage, I often pretend to be someone other than myself to bring a certain emotion or intent to a song.
I absolutely refuse to reveal my age. What am I - a car?
I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.
Just like I am obsessed with the history of fashion, I love reading about the history of makeup.
Humour is a great vehicle for getting a message across. If you get too serious, you could die of starch.
It's that anonymous person who meanders through the streets and feels what's happening there, feels the pulse of the people, who's able to create.
People can save the world by the way they think and by the way they behave and what they hold to be important.
I'm in the business where you get the business all the time.
I come from a line of great Sicilian women, and their mentality is to endure and push through to the other side.
I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.
What, do you think that feminism means you hate men?
I've got a Grammy and Emmy, I'd like to have a Tony.
I get the greatest feeling when I'm singing. It's other-worldly. Your feet are anchored into the Earth and into this energy force that comes up through your feet and goes up the top of your head and maybe you're holding hands with the angels or the stars, I have no idea.
Sometimes my mind boggles. It's so deep my mind actually boggles.
When I got hoarse, the manager would say, 'Drink this. Joplin used to drink this,' and I used to say, 'Joplin? Joplin's dead.
Somebody did complain to me and tell me that my clothes were so loud they couldn't hear me sing.
When I sing I don't feel like it's me. I feel I am fabulous, like I'm 10 feet tall. I am the greatest. I am the strongest. I am Samson. I'm whoever I want to be.
You can laugh when I talk, but not when I sing.
There have been great things that happened to me.
I wanted to make the album I always needed to make. I had to say the things I never could.
Everything does go in a circle.
When I sing I have a lot of visions. Like what's happening now in my life.
I have a hard time doing anything someone else tells me to do! I've always been driven to follow my own path and not be pushed down another lane because some executive thought I could be more commercially successful or whatever.
Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!
Before I became famous I had a very full life, and that gave me a lot to pick from. I always use everything. It always comes in handy. Working with animals... Well, I just enjoyed that. That was the most peaceful time.
You know, I've been playing with my hair color ever since I was nine.
With fame, I'm able to create more. With every success, you have more freedom to create.
I've always felt, even as a songwriter, that the rhythm of speech is in itself a language for me.
I wouldn't record any song that I didn't like.
Dick Clark was a really great influence in my career; he helped me a lot with his whole organization, and they were awesome to me at all different points - but one thing that I really disagreed with him on was when he said that what I do, pop music, is a disposable art form.
I have a wig for when I go outside among the regular folks, so they don't feel uncomfortable because I have a Day-Glo color somewhere in my hair.
The '80s was a really creative and brave period. Remember, it was a period of ultraconservatism, and so you needed brave people to push ahead like that.
I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response.
I do have a lot of difficulty figuring out what I want to be working on, but what's the alternative? To be one of those people who has a million things they want to do, and then never does any of them? And then where will you be?
Fame doesn't redeem you. It takes a long time to get there, and when you're finally there, you realise you still have authority figures telling you what to do.
I never had a rivalry with Madonna. You don't knock another sister, ever. There's room for everybody on this planet; you don't have to be like anyone else.