When I was a teenager I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours, bouffanting my hair like Patty Duke and trying to recreate Barbra Streisand's flawless eyeliner, only to comb it all out and wash it all off before stepping out into the world a butchish bisexual teen.

When I was a kid Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell were mere blips on the gaydar; and they were both still in the closet.

This archaic idea - that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural - will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.

I always think that people think that women in music are always angry. I'm not angry. Rock 'n' roll music made by men is so much more over-the-top aggressive than when a women says "you" and they're screaming it, it's like, 'Oh my God!' I'm like, 'Have you heard rock music made by men?'

When I moved out of my mom's house at 18 I was almost as sad to leave her sewing machine behind as anything else.

Girls are taught to sing high and pretty, like Antony, not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we're slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we're not told growing up, and it's our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it.

I really worshipped Mama Cass a lot. Mama Cass, who was really fat and she didn't lose weight. Yeah, she went on diets but for the most part of her life and the better part of her career she was a big person.