I just started going to shows. I don't know how submerged I am: I feel guilty that I don't get out more, but I really like being inside the house.

Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.

Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people "crazy," we exclude them from our circle.

I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

I am a person of high energy. That, and I sit down and I write when I get an idea - I put other things aside.

There are so many ways to respond to music besides feeling like someone's communicating with you. It gives me a charge.

I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.