"Madge on her divorce to Guy Ritchie: “It was a challenging year… I may have thrown myself off a building. I think work saved me, and I’m very grateful [for that].”
Madonna on Guy Ritchie’s joint custody of Rocco and David: “Life is an adjustment. My sons aren’t with me right now, they’re with their father, and I’m not very comfortable with the idea of my children not living together.”
On her “Benetton ad” family: “My like house is like a Benetton ad. I have French nannies, my security guards are Israeli, I have assistants from Argentina and Puerto Rico as well as a Japanese assistant and chef, and another chef from Italy. It’s wonderful. I love it.”
On son David Banda (who Madge adopted in 2006 from Malawi): “David is my biggest fan. Everybody says that when he watches [my concerts,] he stays frozen from beginning to end, and he studies everything, and he knows every dance step.”
On Justin Timberlake: “He’s sort of Cary Grant.”
On Eminem: “I wanted to work with him… But he didn’t want to work with me. Maybe he’s shy.”
On her nude (and hairy) photos showing up in Playboy and Penthouse: “That was the first time I was aware of saying ‘F- you’ with my attitude. You’re trying to put me down because of this? I [wasn't] going to let public opinion dictate my own feelings about myself. I [wasn't] going to apologize for anything I’ve done.”
She was never really a bad girl: “I didn’t really have my first drink until I got divorced the first time - from Sean Penn - when I was 30. I was kind of a geek in high school. ‘Geek’ is not a word anyone uses to describe me, except perhaps [Confessions on a Dance Floor producer] Stuart Price, who once said, ‘You know, you’re a nerd at heart, nobody knows it.’ I took it as a compliment.”
On her first “provocative” performance in high school: “I had my girlfriends paint my body with fluorescent hearts and flowers. I wore a pair of shorts and a midriff top, and I just went mad. … I’m sure everyone thought I was insane. That was the beginning of my provocative performances, I guess.”
On reinvention: “I think people put a lot of emphasis on the whole reinvention of my image, and it’s always been a lot less calculated than people think. I think it’s boring to stay the same. A girl likes to change her look.”
Worst fashion moment: “It was the purple lipstick, fluorescent-green sweater combo. … It’s OK, it was the Eighties. It was a bad-hairstyle era. Let’s face it.”
On Paul McCartney’s “boring” live performances: “People have told me, ‘You could just go out there and play guitar and sing your songs like Paul McCartney,’ but I’d be too bored. Most of the joy of the shows is the magic of creating them — theater. I’m a perfectionist. I like hard work. I like to sweat.”
