I think that the thing is, all those years of creating music or trying to express something of a dark shadow, an existential angst that I have felt most of my life and still feel today, to not be overwhelmed by it. Music, in a way, is a great vehicle, a means by which one can express all these somewhat contradictory feelings.

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'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.

If one woman is suffering, then we are all suffering, and we need to put a voice to that.

It's hard to tell how far women's individuality has come in the past twenty years.

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.

Desire, despair, desire. So many monsters.