This is how I feel about everything that's out of your control: once you make a record, it's not yours anymore. There's nothing you can do. It's the way I feel about political movements - both of those things grow on their own.

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.

I don't feel famous and I didn't want my autobiography to be like a Paris Hilton story.

Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredible Christian background, and where there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.

I think from a major-label perspective, if you were on the flip side of things and that's the world you were used to working in, your interpretation could be, "Oh, they're having trouble writing songs," when really it's like, "No, I'm not ready to write songs, I don't want to write a song right now, if I did write a song, it would be forced."

I never said I wanted to be a singer for the rest of my life.

If you have a therapist who agrees with your every word, then your brain isn't getting proper exercise.