In the more than ten years since she appeared on SPIN’s first cover Madonna has grown boy-toy to mature balladeer without sacrificing her passion, her sensuality, or her integrity. In perhaps her most revealing interview yet, the world’s most famous woman opens her heart to Bob Guccione, Jr.

In November, Madonna released Something to Remember, a greatest-hits collection of her ballads, 11 previously released, and three new recordings: a remake of Marvin Gaye’s classic "I Want You," and two Madonna compositions, "You’ll See" and "One More Chance"

Since the mic 80s, Madonna has occupied a fascinating place in our culture: that of sexual barometer / searchlight / conscience. It’s a role she invented out of a swirl of personal insecurities, monumental ambition, and enigmatic charisma.
MTV fueled her, on the times cultivated her, as if she were not an actual person, but a chain of organic reactions to the moment. Controversy nourished her career, escalated her ascension, and more talent than she is normally credited with soon made her the biggest star in the world. Except for inevitable backclash–which in her case began with the publication of her Sex book–and the public’s fickleness toward her past couple of albums she has more or less reclaimed her throne.

Madonna is what the press love to call a surviour. But that’s too simplistic, it implies that her induring popularity is due to resistance and tenacity alone. Madonna has prevailed bacause we want her to prevail. Our initail ifatuation and torrid love affair has grown into a decade-long marriage, in which we’ve been thrilled and dissapointed, often to extremes, but we’ve settled together. Something to Remember is a beautiful record – the three new cuts give it the life so desperatelly missing from most greatest-hits packages, and it’s the perfect midpont for a … well, no marriage is perfect.

Madonna and I have not always seen eye-to-eye – I wrote two editorials for Spin criticizing Truth or Dare and Sex – but before this interview we have never met. Two years ago, when I heard that she was upset by my critiques, i suggested to her people (and boy does she have a lot of people) that I should interview her, and we should utilize the tention of adversity, of different views. Good idea, Bob, they said – don’t call us, we’ll call you.

But this past fall, Madonna’s publicist called and said the singer would like to do that interview after all, and I flew to London.

Our discussion took place over two days : first in her hotel suite, high atop one of London’s few legitimatelly tall buildings, then the next day at the studio where she was recording the soundtrack for Evita. She is due to start schooting the movie version in january in Argentina, much to the chagrin of Argentine president Carlos Menen, who recently felt obliged to express his outrage over pop music’s lead diva playing Argentinean history’s lead diva, Eva Peron. We met clandenstinely at the studio – Andrew Lloyd Webber insisted on the recording session being closed, so I posed as her friend and sat in the waiting room.

SPIN: Are you dissapointed that Time Warner jettisoned Interscope? Shouldn’t a company whose main product is artistic expression stand up for its artists?

MADONNA: [sighs] I’ve had several discussions with [Warner Music Group CEO] Michael Fuchs and said, look, I’m not a big fan of music that’s degrading to women or that promotes violence. I am offended by these things too. I’m offended by a movie like Showgirls. I still don’t think that the way to remedy the situation is to go around telling everybody what they can and can’t do.
I think Time Warner, or any of these big. corporate conglomerate entities, should encourage work that is morally uplifting. that counteracts all [the negative sluff]. I think when you’re fed a steady diet of crap, you come to expect it after a while. But art is not really a very important part of our culture any more. I was talking to k.d. lang about it last night. I don’t want to get into slagging off other artists, but we were talking about her record versus someone like Mariah Carey’s — and I think she’s a very talented singer — but we have to realize that the same country that acquitted O.J. is the same country that makes a complete piece of shit movie No.1, that buys Marian Carey records. It’s this homogeneity. But it’s got nothing to do with art.

We are living in generally uninspired times. Why?

Fear of change We are becoming too technologically advanced and unconsciously frightening people. Nobody wants to be a schoolteacher anymore, and education is at an all-time low. Schools are not places whore people learn, they’re just pens that people got baby-sat in and teachers get shot at.

The reason I know the things I know is because I went to an incredible school. I had teachers that made me want to learn and if there’s no incentive for someone to become a schoolteacher, then people are just going to get dumber and dumber. 
It amazes me when I talk to people in their early 20s and they’ve never read the classics, things we read as children. When you don’t have knowledge and understanding, then fear rises in you Knowledge and intelligence and understanding, then fear rises in you. Knowledge and intellegence and understanding give people the tools to deal with change, to look at a different point of view, and say, maybe I don’t agree with it, but it’s there and it may have some validity, so let me think it over.

You’ve said that a strong, intelligent female is still more frightening than a gangster with a machine gun. Why is that?

Because there’s something about a gangster with a gun that men can identify with it still appeals to some sort of primal male thing about violence, and I think it’s ultimately less threatening. Why? Because a white men could look at a black man with a gun in his hand and go, okay, he’s got a gun in his hand, but if I have a gun, then I’m the same as he is. But any man could look at a strong woman and go, oh God, buying a gun isn’t going to make you feel that you have the same thing.
I think about these things all the time. I feel one of the reasons gay culture more readily accepts strong females and divas, or likes women on general, is that the sexual tension is removed. The ***CENSORED*** aspect is nonexistent, so they just deal with women on an intellectual and emotional level. And straight men only think about how you may dominate them on some way or make their dicks shrivel up or something.
I’ve always in this naive way identified with other minorities because I’m in a minority. You think that somehow unifies you in some philosophical way. But ultimately it doesn’t. Because I’ve found that being a strong female is actually more frightening to the black men that I’ve dated. It took me a really long time to accept that.

Would it be the same if you were a black woman?

No

It’s heightened by the fact that you’re a white woman?

I – why is that? This is a really touchy subject. You know, I believe that I have never been treated more disrespectfully as a woman than by the black men that I’ve dated. I’ve never actually said that to anybody, but it’s true and I think it’s a cultural thing.
I think black men have just been shit on for so long, that, in a way, black women are maybe more willing to accept rage from a black man, because they see what’s happened to them. So many black men grow up without fathers, without strong male figures, without a sense of romance and seeing a man treat a woman with respect. I always thought that I appealed to the black and/or gay communities because they’re minority groups and they are prejudged based on things that they have no control over. If you’re born black, you have no control over that. If you’re born gay you can’t help that and you are judged by your sexual preference. The gay community does embrace me and is supportive of me; the black community, on the other hand does not.

I identified with black men because I thought in a way we experience the same things — people treat you like shit ’cause you’re black, people treat you like shit ’cause you’re a woman. But that is not in fact the case. And I came to the realization that a strong female is frightening to everybody, because all societies are male-dominated — black societies, poor people, rich people, any racial group, they’re all dominated by men. A strong female is going to threaten everybody across the board.

What did you think of the O.J. verdict? Where were you?

I was here, in London, in a car, coming home from the studio, and I was devastated. I really was, I suppose I expected him to walk anyway, but I think everybody felt sick after the verdict, even the people who were cheering. I think he’s guilty, but it’s our karma as a nation that he walked. Because we have mistreated blacks and judged them unfairly for so long.

Can art heal the chasm between races, and even the sexes?

Yes I do believe that, I have to believe that. But you know, art can heal it if art is allowed to exist. And if art is slowly wiped off the face of the planet, then what tools do we have to reach people, to appeal to them and all of their senses?
I don’t think we need Bob Dole making those choices for us, or some other asshole politically grandstanding and beating up the artistic community. I mean, it’s all such a bunch of crap.

Is there music you wouldn’t put out on your record label, Maverick?

I would always make that decision based on whether I just liked the music or not. I’ve never been in a situation where an artist came to us and we said, God, we love this music but you’ve got to change these lyncs.

One of the ironies about you is that the very thing that attracts a large segment of your audience is your sexuality and your expression of it. You turn mon on — you turn some women on too, but I’m talking about men here. You’re a beautiful woman and they get to see you sexually. Yet, at the same time, it frightens the hell out of them.

Because it s only the concept and the fantasy that turns them on. But the actual reality that I live off-the-page, that I live and breathe what I say, that I practice what I preach. that’s too much.

Does that make you lonely or nervous about meeting men?

No. It makes me lonely in an existential way, that sort of loneliness you feel when you’re in an elite group of people that thinks that way. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to have friends around me that support my ideas and think the same way I do. Thank God: I’d go insane. And I truly would be lonely. And it does limit you in terms of who you think you could actually have a meaningful relationship with. It’s sort of a weeding process. You can walk into a room and immediately go, "Okay, from here to here are people who I could never have a conversation with."

Are there moments when you just say I wish I was Mariah Carey, just singing silly pop songs?

[Laughs] I’d kill myself.
You’re inevitably called my boy-toy if you go out with me because people can’t imagine that anyone can ***CENSORED*** stand up to me, and it’s a ludicrous idea. I know the majority of Americans think I walk around my house, jodhpurs on and a whip. That I eat men for breakfast and send out my limousine driver to pick up bushels of young men and women, and I let everybody else make my business decisions for me. Even really successful, intelligent men are so ***CENSORED*** scared of me, and buy into the hype. I think a lot go, "no, I can’t be linked with this person, she may overshadow what I do." So that eliminates a whole ‘nother chunk of people.

So who’s left, Bill Gates?

(Laughs] Yeah. There’s nobody left. No, who’s left is a really together human being. A really special person who has a strong sense of self, and those people are few and far between, whether you’re me or anybody else.

What music moves you?

I’m addicted to Latin music. I concentrate on the music, and it really takes me to another place. I love Alanis’s record. I know I’m supposed to say that, cause she’s on my label, but thank God for people like that. I’m really sick of music that’s just full of "the world sucks. Everything sucks. No hope." I mean — that bores me. I just don’t ***CENSORED*** believe it. I just think it’s fashionable for them to say it.

It used to be that musical artists took years and several albums to develop their sound and become popular. Video has changed that for good — is that detrimental?

Now everything is just propelled so quickly forward, it happens at the speed of light. We spit people out and move on to the next thing. And the whole visual element ultimately stumps the growth of an artist, I think. 
People used to really concentrate on the songs, and either identified with them or not, but now when you hear a song on the radio, you don’t just hear the song, you think about the video, about the artist, about whether their marriage is falling apart or not. There are all these distractions that have nothing to do with the music.

What do you think of Courtney Love?

[Laughs] I knew you were going to ask me that question.

So you probably have a statement prepared.

I do. I do. I rehearsed it. No, I think she’s supremely talented. I really do. When Maverick first started, we tried to sign her. But I think that drugs have destroyed her brain, or they are slowly destroying her. I am fascinated by her, but the same way I am by somebody who’s got Tourette’s syndrome walking in Central Park. I want to stop and just watch their human behaviour. She fascinates me on that level. I don’t know. I feel sorry for her. I really do, and I know if she reads this, she’ll be slagging me off online for the next eight months. I do think she knows not what she says.
It’s true for old people who go around spewing venom on people, that deep down inside, they’re hurt, they’re sad, lonely, whatever. Kurt Loder interviewed me after the MTV Awards, after I won some award, and I was sitting up on a platform on the street. About five minutes into the interview, a compact went sailing over my head. I thought someone on the street was throwing things at me. And I hear this gravelly voice, and then we looked down and it’s Courtney, and she’s throwing makeup out of her purse at us, and it’s just missing our heads. And Kurt invites her up.
Now, I know Kurt invited her up because there’s all this hyped-up bullshit how we have been feuding for years and years, and I think he wanted to see a catfight. She was babbling about 25 different things. And at one point, she did grab my arm and said something to me like. " ‘94 sucked, but ’95’s going to be better, isn’t it?" And in that ono moment I looked in her eyes and felt her vulnerability and her sadness and I felt bad for her. I felt that she was trying to reach out to me, even though at every chance she gets, she slags me off in the press. Years ago, she probably admired me and looked up to me, and now I’m like a parent to her or something, and she wants to destroy me. So, that’s what I think about Courtney [laughs].

What did you think of Kurt Cobain and his songwriting?

I thought, he’s really talented. I respect him as an artist. I never met him. He wasn’t really around long enough for me to really sink my teeth into. You know, it’s too bad that he couldn’t find something to hang onto. I suppose in a lot of ways those two are cosmically meant for each other, lust the shitload of self-loathing, you know?

I hear from every woman who I’ve discussed you with over the years that what they like about you is you’re a strong woman and a success. The question Charles Barkley balked at: Are you a role model?

Yes, I’m a role model for those who dare to be different. For those who dare to take a stand in their life, and have an opinion, and be individual Yeah. But I think I’m a role model for a minority group of people. I definitely think that I inspire people. Charles Barkley’s a role model whether he likes it or not.

There’s a tremendous indignation and selfrighteousness in this country toward sexual expression, and you particularly have borne the brunt of that, probably more than any other musician in the last 15 years. But I don’t see you as just an artistic martyr; don’t you also exploit that repressiveness? For instance, when the "Justify My Love" video got banned, it became the highest selling music video ever.

I didn think that while we were making it, by the way, but–

You must have, I believe, realized that it was sexy and provocative and pushing the corner of the envelope.

Well, it turned me on.

Did you realize the commercial viability of pushing that envelope?

No, and when I put my Sex book out — my mistake was that I naively thought that everybody liked the same things I liked, and had the same sense of humor I had, and was turned on by the same things, and I was really creating in a vacuum. I was pushing the envelope with "Justify My Love,’ but when I put out Sex, that’s when the big steel doors came down on my head. It’s like, you can push the envelope, but you can’t open the envelope.

But why not? The book was hugely successful.

Yes, but I’ve been hanged in the public square ever since. There are the people that liked the book and didn’t like it just on a taste level, Of whatever. And then there are people who just were horrified by it and didn’t even bother to look at it or read it. I divide my career from before and after the Sex book, Up until then, I really was just being a creative person working and doing things that inspired ma and I thought would inspire other people. After that, I suddenly had a whole different point of view about life in general. Ever since that book, I think there are the people that look at me and go, "Oh man, she just went off the deep end, she went too far. I can’t deal with her, she disgusts me," And then I think there are other people who go, even if they didn’t like the Sex book, "Oh well, she survived that and she goes on and she continues to do what she wants to do," in spite of the fact that the press beat the shit out of me. Very few people came to my rescue. It was an incredibly eye-opening experience.
You can’t be a pop star and have an opinion. Some unknown entity can put out a magazine with erotic photographs, but a famous person young girls identify with can’t do that and make money off of it. I think men can deal with those fantasies when a man is in control of them and in charge, like your father and his magazine. It’s a man’s point of view, it’s a man’s fantasy. Sex was my fantasy, and I made money off of it. That is a no-no.
Then there was just a lot of imagery that grossed people out in the book. A lot of people were really disgusted with the men that were together with men. They were fine, you know, with my naked ass all over the place.

Do you think that the problem was that you, the subject, were In control?

Yes. I was not objectified. I was involved on every level, and that is unacceptable. It’s all part of the strong woman in control being terrifying to people.

Do you regret doing that David Letterman Interview?

I regretted it right afterward because of the reaction. I couldn’t believe how freaked out people were. But then, in retrospect, I was so glad I did it. That’s how I feel about a lot of things. You know, I do it and then everybody freaks out and then I start feeling bad about what I did, then I got some space and distance, and I go, no, that was the right thing to do. It’s hard to feel good about the choices you make when an entire nation is beating up on you. I mean I can’t tell you how Intimidating it all is, and how, if you’re not an incredibly resilient human being, it can crush you, no question about it.
The whole thing about going on TV and saying "***CENSORED***" was just ridiculous You can show a person getting blown up, and you can’t say "***CENSORED***?" It’s such hypocrisy. The fact that everyone counted how many ***CENSORED***’s I said — how small-minded is that?

People were really worked up about it.

A word. A word. It’s just a word. And it doesn’t even mean what it used to mean! It’s become a part of our daily life, it means like a zillion things.
The other thing that was ridiculous was that David Letterman knew I was going to do it. I talked to the producers of the show. Everybody was like, this will be really funny if you say "***CENSORED***" a lot and they’ll lust keep bleeping you. Well, I came out and started doing it, and David freaked out. The way he introduced me was derogatory, so my whole thing was, okay, if that’s how you want to play it, you cannot beat me at this game.

There was a comment in a recent issue of Buzz in its "100 Coolest People in L.A." article, which said, "Cool Experience with Madonna — She optioned your play, Uncool Experience with Madonna — You slept with her." How do things like that make you feel?

Well, the one idea that people are fed about me is that I fucked everybody. People think that I am this, like, stone-cold, way-out freak. There aro a Iot of people who buy into that. That’s just the way it is.

What effect did growing up Catholic have on you and on your sexuality?

When you are raised to believe that anything having to do with sex is forbidden and taboo, then of course that’s all you want to know about. That becomes your complete and utter fascination. That is the surest way to interest a child. If you say to them, "You can’t go in that room," they’re going to go in the room. And that’s what Catholicism does. But at the same time, it’s because it’s full of so much angst and sin — and attention on sin and what’s forbidden — that it was a really mesmerizing religion. There’s so much pomp and circumstance that I was hugely influenced by it.
I was so eager to lose my virginity, simply because I was told so often that it was the most sinful thing you could do. I was really influenced artistically, too. Catholicism is a very masochistic religion, and I grow up with a mother who was devoutly Catholic and I saw her doing things that really affected me. She would kneel on uncooked rice and pray during Lent. I mean, she would sleep on wire hangers. She was passionately religious. Swooning with it, if my aunt came over to the house, and had jeans that zipped up the front, my mother covered all the statues. Turned the holy pictures to the wall.

Did that turn you off to religion? Turn you on to it?

I don’t know, I couldn’t say how it affected me. But it’s obviously affected me now, when you look at all of my work.

How exactly?

I somehow equate God and religion and sacrifice with taboo and sexuality. All of those things are sort of mixed up in a stew for mo. I don’t know if you had to do this, but when I went to Catholic school, you had to go to church before school.

Yeah.

And on Sunday you couldn’t eat before you went to church and you’re practically fainting because your blood-sugar level was so low, I mean, just all of those things, the sacrifice and the discipline, between that and my training as a dancer, that discipline has absolutely fueled me and given me a kind of resilience that I don’t think a lot of other entertainers have. In Catholicism, "suffering is good," then when you’re fed a steady diet of "suffering is good," then when you’re suffenng you can deal with it.

But you don’t believe suffering is good now, as an adult?

No. I don’t. But I know that it got me through a lot of things. It made me stay in New York, when I went there as a teenager, and I didn’t know a soul. It kept me going. Even if I don’t believe it, my father raised me to believe that if you’re suffering, you’re doing something right.
My older brothers were incredibly rebellious, they got into drugs and trouble with the police. One of my brothers ran off and became a Moonie and the other one joined the army. I became an overachiever. I had it programmed in my mind – "I don’t care if I have to live on the street, and I don’t care if I have to eat garbage. I’ll do it." I probably suffered unnecessarily, but somehow, unconsciously, my father saying that made me not want to give up.

Does faith play a part in that?

Absolutely.

There’s a great quote by Saint Augustine that faith is not meant to replace reason, but it’s for those parts that reason can’t reach.

True. You have to have faith, and that’s what bothers me about a lot of alternative music. There’s no faith.

I see you having a fascinating, or a fascinated, relationship with Catholicism. I think you have a deep faith and love of God. Is that correct?

Absolutely. Catholicism is what I was raised with, that’s the religion I know, but I disagree with almost every principle of it. If I ever got into a room with the Pope, I would probably fly into a rage with him. All of this adulation. I don’t think people realize what he’s actually saying. I mean, women have literally, absolutely, no nghts in the Church. There is no freedom, there’s no choice. I know a lot of Catholics who go to church, who practice, but they don’t agree with three fourths of it. But it’s good to have faith, and I love going to church. I don’t necessarily like going to mass, but I do love going to church.

Have you been lately?

Yes. I go to church a lot, in Miami. There’s a beautiful church right down the street from my house called St. Jude’s, a Spanish church. It’s gorgeous and my surrogate mother takes me, comes to my house and drags we there. She’s Cuban. She loves the priest, the priest comes over to my house all the time, Father Gabriel, and they’re really sweet, they bring me blessed rosaries and holy water. It’s very comforting, it really is. Because you got the understanding of how it used to be. A sense of community. People who are feeling lonely or sick, they go and talk to the priest, there’s someone loving and understanding and compassionate. That idea lust really doesn’t exist any more. Certainly not in the urban areas.

Would you have been a good nun? I know you thought about it.

No, I wouldn’t have been a good nun, because I would not have wanted to be celibate. But I always associated nuns with schoolteachers, so in that respect, I would have been because I think I would be a good teacher.

What do you most miss from those days in New York when you were DJing and playing in clubs, back in the early ’80s?

What I most miss is the privilege of observing. Because I don’t have that privilege now. Unless I’m in a controlled environment. My favorite thing in the world was to go out in the streets and watch people, and be anonymous, and go to clubs, go out on a dance floor by myself and dance. I can’t do that anymore. I went from being this incredibly brave person walking down the street, really bold, looking into people’s eyes, saying what I felt, and now, I walk down the street and I look down, I avoid eye contact. I went from insisting on it to avoiding it, because I don’t want to cause a scene.

Would you like to go back to that?

No

No?

No, because I know so much more now.

Do you ever think of quitting?

Sure. (Laughs] I suppose I miss the innocence. I miss my wide-eyed, "I can do anything, life is great" attitude. I still think I am idealistic, but I know more and I understand human nature more, so that sort of eliminates a certain amount of idealism or innocence.

Your new record is not outrageous at all — does that make you more acceptable?

I think this record will allow people to concentrate more on the music and not so much on the controversy that usually surrounds everything I do. Whether it makes me more acceptable or not I don’t know, because at this point I think the people who are against me, they’ve made up their mind regardless of what record I put out.

Have you mellowed?

(Laughs) Uh, no. I just think I know how to pick my battles more wisely.

But not mellowed?

No, I am still lust as passionate and freaked out about all the same things. I get into the biggest arguments with people — racial issues, talking to people who are homophobic, who say they’re not but really are. I will argue something to the death if I think that my opponent is worthy. I mean, when people are just blatantly stupid and ignorant, why bother. It’s like talking to a stone.

What else makes you angry?

Being misquoted, being misunderstood, being judged unfairly because I am a woman people have a hard time feeling sorry for. I think that’s the key — you’re allowed to be bad if people can find something in you that they can pity. Those kind of things make me angry.

What makes you passionately happy, excited, stimulated?

Art that really moves me, whether a movie, or music, or a painting. And other powerful people, other celebrities taking a stand on something, having an opinion, a point of view. Isn’t it great when you hear someone say something and you just go "Right ***CENSORED*** on, finally!" Because hardly anybody ever does so, when they do you just go crazy.

Like, for instance, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new video, there are two guys kissing in it and everybody’s all freaked out about it? I’m so happy. I just love it. I watched it and I said, "Right ***CENSORED*** on." I have total respect for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I really do. They rule.

You said to me earlier, "I’m a little older, a little more sophisticated in my taste, and so it’s a more sophisticated record." What do you expect from this record?

For people to just enjoy the music, purely and simply. I think lyrically, my ballads are my best songs. What I expect is just for people to appreciate my music, and lyrically maybe understand better where I’m coming from.

What is the song "One More Chance" about?

Often in my songwriting I take things people say to me and turn them around, and put it in the first person, so it’s actually something that was said to me.

By who?

[Laughs] Oh, this man. This man I know.

Who?

It’s not important. I did, by the way, give him one more chance, yes I did.

And he blew it again?

No.

Great! It’s a happy story.

Yes, there are several of those in my life.

You said in an interview that you wished there were a hundred of you, or a million I think, because you felt bad when you outgrew a relationship and got excited by someone new, and wished you could leave a clone of yourself with the previous guy.

Um hmm. What an idiot I was to say that! [Laughs] I think what I really meant, if you want to get down and analyze me, is that I want to be able to love as many people as I want to love, and I don’t want the people I love to stop loving me, that’s really the Freudian analysis of that little statement. But that’s the statement of a coward.

Why do you say that?

Because, okay, you get in a relationship with someone and fall madly in love with them and then for some reason or another it doesn’t work out. Or maybe it’s because you’re just chickenshit, and you can’t deal with committing to somebody or being intimate. "Okay, stay right here, you keep loving me, I’m going to go over here and check this out" — that’s being a coward. You have to be able to say "Okay. I’m wiling to risk losing you by doing this. I understand if you stop loving me." That’s actually something that’s been very hard for me — it’s been very hard for me to end relationships that are really unhealthy. But I’m getting better at it.

Someone who worked with you in the early ’80s once told mo that you desperately needed approval. Presuming he was correct, do you still need that level of approval, or has it diminished over the years?

Of course I need it. But I now want the approval of people that I respect. I mean true, deep-down approval. If people that I don’t know happen to endorse what I do, that’s great, but the most important thing is people that I care about, their approval. I think it’s very childish to think that you can make the entire world love you, especially if you have opinions.

It’s less important to you now, that they all love you?

It’s not necessary, it’s impossible. it’s unrealistic. In the end, by having a point of view, by taking a stand for things you believe in, you’re ultimately always going to offend people. That’s good. It’s certainly more important to take a stand on some thing and offend people, than to be careful all of your life and have everyone approve of what you do. Or, as my psychiatrist likes to say, bolter to five one year as a tiger than 100 as a sheep.

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