Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

When you're that successful, things have a momentum, and at a certain point you can't really tell whether you have created the momentum or it's creating you.

I think the whole experience of being a human being on the planet is such a mystery, to be honest. Trying to figure out one's purpose and [asking] "What is it all about?"

I love to make music and stay grounded.

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.

The music industry has always been a beast, which would eat you up and spit you out.

When women get together as a group, it is immensely powerful.