The '80s was a really creative and brave period. Remember, it was a period of ultraconservatism, and so you needed brave people to push ahead like that.

I've always felt, even as a songwriter, that the rhythm of speech is in itself a language for me.

I lucked out when I started to sing. I'd already experienced failing at everything else.

Everything does go in a circle.

I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.

You know, I do speak the Queens English. It's just the wrong Queens that's all. It's over the 59th Street Bridge. It's not over the Atlantic Ocean.

The '80s was a really creative and brave period. Remember, it was a period of ultraconservatism, and so you needed brave people to push ahead like that.