I learned what a lot of women have to do is make the guys in the room think it was their idea, and then you back them up.

I think every year brings unknowns that you have to deal with and handle, confront and embrace.

I've never done an album like this. With Biophilia, I was being like Kofi Annan - I had to be the pacifist to try to unite the impossible. Maybe that was a strange, personal job between me and myself, to show how overreaching I was being as a woman. The only way I could express that was by comparing it to the universe.

I am one of the most idiosyncratic people around.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm older and I'm thinking about family more, but I'm trying to set up this thing where I can play in one city for a month, and then write music for a couple months, then play in another city for a month, write music for a month. Just so it's not these two schizophrenic, Jekyll and Hyde kind of things; you don't have to be this monster. You get inspired and you can go write one song from that, and then you go back and play a few shows. If I could've done that in the 90s, I would have.

I would like to teach music. It's weird the way they teach music in schools like Julliard these days.

I find it very difficult to draw a line between what's sex and what isn't. It can be very, very sexy to drive a car, and completely unsexy to flirt with someone at a bar.