I always felt like an outsider to the music world in a certain way. There was so much less of an art culture in L.A. - and particularly in the South Bay.

Many designers are gay men making clothes for women. Sometimes I think fashion is more of a conversation between men than it is for women.

When Punk Rock happened, it created an opening in the culture... it made it ok to think you could play music, even though you had no musical training.

I mean, I don't even think of myself as a musician, really.

At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it.

For me performing has a lot to do with being fearless.

In retrospect, it's ridiculous that anyone saw me as a fashion icon, since all I was trying to do was to dumb down my middle-class look by messing with my hair. Throughout the eighties I was invariably half-sure and half-confident about whatever it was I wore…Still, I've always believed—still do—that the radical is far more interesting when it looks benign and ordinary on the outside.