I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.

I have a hunger for justice, but art is a place I've always enjoyed being able to be free - to live in worlds that you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. I don't see myself writing Upton Sinclair books. My books are to entertain, although to me, entertainment is to make you feel sadness or to get in touch with your own pain - or fear, or to remember somebody who has gone missing from your life. That's my calling.

Men tend to dominate whatever public discourse they participate in, and another big part of feminism is to let women have their say. Men's voices can be welcome at the table, but there is a time and a place, and maybe it's now, for men to make a little less noise, make their needs less known, and listen to the needs of others.

I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice.

Back in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle.

There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die.

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