Putting your ego aside and confronting your weaknesses and just letting things happen is hard. Not to use a Scientology term, but it's difficult to do an emotional or an artistic audit.

For a brief moment, I considered deconstructing the song and going down a cerebral road, but then I realized it would kill what is most powerful about it.

I don't even wanna say female guitar-players, just guitar-players, because music of all things doesn't need to be gendered and stratified, that's so boring.

I think every time I play, every show is different, and I think that at a certain point a song isn't about you anymore. It's about the audience, it's about how the song has worked its way into other people's lives and that kind of keeps the meaning of the song new, because you see it reflected in other people every night.

CDs are usually an hour long because that's the amount a CD could hold - not because that's the optimal amount of time for any given musical expression.

I'm first and foremost a guitar player. I've been playing since I was 12, which is over half of my life. I like the physicality of it; you can strangle it or make it sing. I wouldn't say I'm a very technical player, though. I'm more intuitive - it's always more about chasing an abstraction.

I know that, physically, I'm a very demure-looking person. But I certainly have as much aggression or anger as the next person, and that's got to come out somehow. I'm lucky that I get to play music, and that it's not going to come out in some totally destructive way.