I never wanted to have a profession, and I've succeeded in not having one, or if I did have one it never paid, or it's never been especially long-term.

Not that I have anything against music now, but I just hated being an anything. I don't know why.

My music education was oral. I was resistant to scores and things like that. In Jewish religious music, there are no scores. You learn everything by rote, by ear, by repeating.

There are some people who love being a something, but I also got the gist in the 60's when I grew up that you could be, in the art scene, very diverse.

I hung around hippie-ish kind of people and, first of all, they never made any money. If you never make any money, you never have to declare any profession!

I actually started as a singer in Brooklyn, and I lived in a community. To get out of the ghetto of my community, I was a musician.

For Jewish people, salmon has a special meaning, not just because it's a flavor we've had all along our diaspora. Salmon also have this special return-to-their-roots desire. At the end of their lives, salmon try to swim back to when they were born. Even if they can't, they have this obsession. We as diaspora people love that a lot about salmon.