Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

I'm a female but I have a masculine side and I'm not going to negate that part of myself.

I was perceiving myself as good as a man or equal to a man and as powerful and I wanted to look ambiguous because I thought that was a very interesting statement to make through the media. And it certainly did cause quite a few ripples and interest and shock waves.

Everything is illusory. You cannot label something and feel that that is the beginning, middle, and end of it.

There's so much stigma around HIV/AIDS. It's a challenging issue, and the people that already have been tested and know their status find it very, very hard to disclose their status, to live with that virus, and to even seek out the kind of information they need. This experience of going to South Africa a decade ago really woke me up to the scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, how it was affecting women and their children. I haven't been able to walk away from it.

I've never been a social person. When I grew up, the other girls would all be combing their hair and exchanging lipstick, and I just couldn't do that group thing.

I also started writing songs because I had this burning activity in my heart and had to express myself.