Every artist has to make their own statements and they have to live with them.

The contrast of the world that we live in and the world that is here in Aspen and the world inhabited by women who have no resources, little or no, very few resources - huge disparity.

I didn't want to be perceived as a girly girl on stage.

There are so many things that we could do to change the world in so many aspects. There are people working in nonprofit organizations, tackling the issues that we so desperately need to face, while governments fail so appallingly.

I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

At times, I've been so absolutely terrified of what I was about to do, whether it was public speaking or performance. Whatever it was, sometimes it had me really, really shaking in my shoes, and I decided that I was going to do it no matter what. And, of course, the critic is there, and afterwards, there's this, "Was it good enough? Was it really all I wanted to say?"

Dying is easy, it's living that scares me to death.