The years between leaving school and actually becoming an adult are very important years. You make a lot of choices as to the type of life you want to lead and what type of person you want to be. There were so many people who had opinions of me, a lot of them very unflattering, that it was hard to make up my mind about who I was supposed to be.

I think I've gotten everything I want out of the last years, and I still feel like I have a lot of options open to me.

I lost my partner [Anselmo Feleppa] to HIV then it took about three years to grieve; then after that I lost my mother. I felt almost like I was cursed.

A lot of people felt that I was just tying that into the "I Want Your Sex" theme because of the AIDS thing and the prospect of the song's being banned. I thought it was a relevant point to make because of the AIDS thing. I wanted to write a song which sounded dirty but which was applicable to someone that I really cared about. That was my point.

By the time I was in my early teens, we were able to move into a much more middle-class area. I had a comfortable adolescence.

Yet ["One More Try" ] really seemed to connect with people, which is a wonderful thing and a marvelous coincidence.

Take back your picture in a frame. Take back your singing in the rain. I just hope you understand sometimes the clothes do not make the man.