When I was a teenager in the '80s, I was the only girl in the guitar shop. Now if you walk into a music store, it's mostly teenage girls. It's great! It's an expansion of possibilities for young women, finding a way to tools even if they aren't directly handed those tools by adults.

My mother was a feminist, and she gave me some tools of self-possession and self-empowerment, but now that I have lived here for forty-three years, it's, like, whoa, there is just so much more to do, other than become myself. I'm still talking about it. I still drop the P-word, "patriarchy," on unsuspecting people in everyday conversations.

The way I play guitar is very, very hard and I bloody myself incredibly without the tape. And the nails are my picks.

My country tis of thee, to take swings at each other on talk show TV.

First decide what you got to do, then go out and do it. All we can do is to see each other through it.

You can't start with imbalance and end with peace, be that in your own body, in an ecosystem or between a government and its people. What we need to strive for is not perfection, but balance.

Words are hotter than flames. Words are wetter than water.