"Diamonds & Rust" started off as another song. Then the words started to morph. When you write a song that deep, the words come from some place else. But when the songs stop coming, it would be so contrived to try and force it. Since then I've just been doing other people's music.

It sounds corny, but it's absolutely true: A song chooses me. I don't go looking for a certain kind of lyric. It kind of develops its own little arc and I'll just see what happens.

Social change really cannot happen unless people are willing to take a risk, and they were. And I was so moved by that, and of course by the way that he spoke, that made a huge dent in my belief system and my spirit.

I didn't study anything really. I didn't learn out of the books because I couldn't read music very well, so it is what they say it is - you learn from other people. And my cohorts and I would sneak around the coffee shops and hear stuff we wanted to learn, and then you ask whoever was playing it to teach you.

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.

In this society, we don't like to face the future and the dying process and all of it. Most of us really don't want to think about it, but it's facing me in the mirror every day.

Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.