Madonna looks fantastic on the cover of Vanity Fair. She must be so grateful to photoshop and filters! Seriously, the skin is smooth, the veins are not popping out of her hands and arms and the bulging muscles are toned down to a more feminine appearance. I say photoshop. She probably would deny it.

There was an interview with the photos. Here’s some of what she had to say …

On the paparazzi:

“The paparazzi are out of control,” she would later say. “I haven’t been to Los Angeles in quite a while, and I don’t watch television here or in England, and I was told there’s now a television show where the paparazzi are the stars of the show—is that true? That they film each other doing paparazzi jobs? Which gives them more fuel. I usually found that type kept their distance—they definitely do in England, because it’s illegal to photograph children. But that’s not how it is here. They get this close, and don’t care how much they scare your children. Being famous has changed a lot, because now there’s so many outlets, between magazines, TV shows, and the Internet, for people to stalk and follow you. We created the monster.”

On having kids:

“If you have children, you know you’re responsible for somebody,” she explained. “You realize you are being imitated; your belief systems and priorities have a direct influence on these children, who are like flowers in a garden. So you start to second-guess everything you value, and the suffering of other children becomes much more intolerable.”

On Africa:

“If you’ve got one iota of compassion, you can’t ignore what’s going on. You have to figure out a way to be a part of the solution.”

On New York:

“It’s not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn’t feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died.”

On the music industry:

“Well, there’s one thing you can’t download and that’s a live performance. And I know how to put on a show, and enjoy performing, and I’ll always have that.”

On her husband Guy Ritchie:

“We make different kinds of movies. I don’t have the technical knowledge he has. He’s got a vision, and his films are very testosterone-fueled. Mine are much more from a female point of view, and I can’t help but be autobiographical in everything I do.”

On her long career:

“Honestly, it’s not something I sit around ruminating about. Who is my role model and how long can I keep this going? I just move around and do different things and come back to music, try making films and come back to music, write children’s books and come back to music.”

On Kabbalah:

“A lot of people join the group, but don’t know why,” Madonna said. “I was raised a Catholic and was never encouraged to ask questions, or understand the deeper meanings or mystical implications of the New Testament or the history of Jesus, or the fact that he was Jewish, or anything, you know? So I rejected that, because who wants to go through life being told you do things because you do things? When I started going to classes and studying [Kabbalah], I did it out of curiosity. I was told it was the mystical interpretation of the Old Testament.”

Read the rest of the interview at Vanity Fair.