Most of my records are never going to be commercial successes, and I don't expect that. It's just all a learning process to me. If something appears as a failure, fine. If there's success, fine. I like the record, and my friends like the record, and that's kind of all I can really care about.

When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you're told that you're overreacting, you're too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.

I do have personal relationships with a lot of "fans," in quotations. I answer all my mail, I get emails from fans, and I try to answer them all. That's important to me, but occasionally there's the thing where people basically ask me to write book reports for them, and I don't have that kind of time. I feel like there's a certain sexism involved, like because I'm a woman I'm supposed to constantly be like giving to everybody.

The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.

Not to rag on myself, but when people say, 'What does it feel like to be an icon?' I'm like, 'My dog does not think I'm an icon, my cat does not think I am an icon, my cousin does not think I am an icon.' I have a really lovely group of friends, and I just don't think about it.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

I felt it was really, really important, not just in the vein of feminist erasure or whatever but also just as an artist that I honored my work.