I would say that although my music may be or may have been part of the cultural background fabric of the gay community, I consider myself an outsider who belongs everywhere and nowhere... Being a human being is what truly counts. That's where you'll find me.

There's good stuff and bad stuff, but you continue on. I'm not prescriptive - I cannot tell anyone else what to do with their lives, and I'm a deeply flawed individual - but this is it. We're all just living it and... bless us all.

If we value what we've inherited for free - from other women - surely it's right morally and ethically for us to wake up and say, 'I'm a feminist. '

I identify with other women because of my gender, and I identify with other women if they are mothers because I'm a mother, too. It's very simple. It's nothing complicated, it's not rocket science. It's about empathy. It's about understanding that what happens with one person is potentially what happens to you, and seeing yourself in someone else's shoes. Fundamentally, we are all in the same place: we're born, we live, and we're going to die. In between, we'll have joy and we'll have sadness.

I'm not intensely private - I talk a great deal about my life and my work - I just don't play the game to excess.

It's harder to get out of bed when you've failed.

I'm not a risk taker physically. I just have no interest in swinging myself off a mountaintop or parachute gliding or skiing down a totally vertical drop. These things don't interest me in the slightest, but I get so caught up in the color or the texture of the sounds of something. That's so funny to me.