I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.

Men find powerful women so threatening, and finding a partner was starting to look laughable, because I would be really attracted to guys and they would just be so threatened and I didn't like feeling threatening, I didn't want to feel threatened, I didn't want to feel like I was towering over anybody.

When you're an artist, nobody ever tells you or hits you with the magic wand of legitimacy. You have to hit your own head with your own handmade wand. And you feel stupid doing it.

The impulse to connect the dots - and to share what you've connected - is the urge that makes you an artist

You tour and you work hard and you take care of your fans and very real things lead to other real things. There's never been some fantastic fluke or break in my career, it has all been very slow and steady.

I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is how do we make people pay for music? What if we started asking, how do we let people pay for music?

Art is food for the soul, and an artistic climate is a healthy climate because it breeds empathy.