"I want to make a pop album - something more upbeat than my stuff was in the '90s."

"You'll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart."

"There's no comfort in the truth, pain is all you'll find."

"Of course, I want to sell this record - there's no point making it otherwise."

"I've never done anything so political before. I've spent years shouting my mouth off about serious issues over dinner tables but never really had the confidence to express my views in a song."

"My American gay audience have continued to dance and sing to the music I make in a way that straight Americans haven't. I am grateful to them for that."

"Celebrity and secrets don't go together. The bastards will get you in the end."

"Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart."

"I define my sexuality in terms of the people that I love."

"I would advise any gay person that being out in the real sense can never happen too soon."

"With pop stars or film stars, we become the object of people's self-definition, as well as the object of sexual definition."

"I think the media is a real demon."

"I left school at 17 and was a star by the time I was 18 - in certain parts of the world anyway."

"Your political system is actually too democratic. The fact that Americans vote on every bill and proposition can prolong bigotry indefinitely, especially where it is aimed at minority groups."

"It's absolutely essential that we have the same safeguards that straight couples do. But I want more than a 50 percent chance of success. I don't want to emulate that."

"The whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it's total crap to pretend it's not."

"I'm not anti-American. I've lived with Kenny, a Texan, for six years."

"I spent years growing up being told what my sexuality was."