Nicki Minaj

Definitely tougher to be vulnerable. As a woman in the industry, you try so hard to remain strong and to not let your guard down. And once you let the walls down and let people see that you were a regular person who has feelings, sometimes people take advantage of that. I think that applies for everyone. It’s always a little bit nerve-racking to just completely let your guard down because you just don’t know if people are going to appreciate it. And then if they don’t appreciate it, you can feel like you did it in vain.

You know my heart couldn’t take it.

This is what happens when you release a great body of work after they spent millions to ruin you.

Some may call it attitude, some might call it genius

I love being able to say, I’m not American, I’m Trini. I think it gives me so much more depth.

Abstaining from sex had to zen my body. I ain’t giving, so don’t ask, I don’t lend my body. He gotta be king status to get in my body.

I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing.

I’ve always been very positive and very resilient.

I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it.

If you ain’t trying to cheat a little, you ain’t likely to win much.

[on Sarah Palin returning to Fox News] First tonight, I and the rest of America woke up this morning in the worst way imaginable.

The thing is, I get asked when I first knew I wanted to act so often, and I genuinely can’t answer it. It’s just… I got the bug, and that’s it.

For a while I was like, “Oh my God, anyone that would release an album as an actor is the biggest fool ever”, but I happened to have sung all my life before I was an actor. Why are musicians allowed to become actors? No one ever gives them flack for that.

I hate cliché. And when you’re a rock singer in 1966, or whatever it was, psychedelic blues, through to the ’70s, which we know all about, and the ’80s, which was a scramble to hang on in, and the ’90s, which was a great time for experimentation…to get to this place, I’m really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I’ve been involved with.

The women’s movement hasn’t changed my sex life. It wouldn’t dare.

So when I come across as being everybody’s mate and nice and humble, I’m only nice and humble to a certain degree; the other side of me is arrogantly determined to do what the f**k I want.

I think it’s easier for the general public to embrace me in a negative way. You have people who already have a perception of me that says I’m a bad person.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you

As a child I was the best tree climber in our neighbourhood, I was like a little monkey. I’ve never been afraid of hurting myself or a little physical discomfort.

I aspire to be Jack Nicholson. I love every single mannerism. I used to try and be him in virtually everything I did, I don’t know why. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when I was about 13, and I dressed like him. I tried to do his accent. I did everything like him. I think it’s kind of stuck with me.

I haven’t really decided to be an actor yet! I started doing plays when I was about 15 or 16. I only did it because my dad saw a bunch of pretty girls in a restaurant and he asked them where they came from and they said drama group. He said “Son, that is where you need to go”.