I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.

It's funny how something so normal and mundane that you see every day-your body-can be controversial. The shock value is intense. It's like carrying an art piece around with you all the time.

I don't get mad with people, like, 'Oh, but that's not what the song was about...' It's also nice to know that people are mindlessly dancing to a song about the US Government's stance on same-sex marriages... especially straight jocks. I love that idea. I think that's the beauty of music - it's different for everybody.

Someone told me once that Lucinda Williams takes six years between albums, and that's what stuck to me; it's like, you really are a factory. You don't do things to make them, on your own time.

I'm on a diet. It's very strict: all hot dogs. Just sausages, constantly. It's working out - I've gained fifteen pounds!

I think if the world were a fair and just place, there wouldn't even need to be a gay label.

In moments when I question if I should be having kids, I think of all those phone calls from my sister-in-law, in which, 3,000 miles away, I hear my nephews screaming for her attention. I tell her I have to go because I am packing to leave for Europe, and her tone flatlines: "That must be nice."