The fact that I’ve never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I’m holding. So if you’re going to look at your life and say, “I get to play sold-out football stadiums all over the world. I get to call up my favorite artists and ask them to perform with me, and most of the time they say yes. I get to be on the cover of this magazine”—this is all because I write songs about my own life. So I would feel a little strange complaining about how it’s covered.

“I just write about the things that haunt me the most. And you know, that sounds kind of depressing, but good things can haunt you the same way as bad things can haunt you. Good memories can leave even more of a mark or a scar on your heart as the bad times, and the bad memories, and the slamming doors, and the fights. So when I say that I write about things that haunt me, they’re not always about bad ghosts.”

“I want to thank the fans for the last 10 years and the Recording Academy for giving us this unbelievable honor. I want to thank all of my collaborators who you see on this stage. Mostly I want to thank my co-executive producer Max Martin who has deserved to be up here for 25 years. And as the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there: there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people side track you, someday when you get to where you’re going, you’ll look around and you’ll know that it was you and the people who love you that put you there. And that will be the greatest feeeling in the world. Thank you for this moment.”

“Self-awareness has been such a huge part of what I try to achieve on a daily basis. It’s less about reputation management and strategy and vanity than it is about trying to desperately preserve self-awareness, since that seems to be the first thing to go out the door when people find success.”

Met Gala 2013.