I just thought that I was going to get to sing for a living and I wouldn't have to go to work in the department store or whatever else you did if you were a woman in those days.

Everybody has their own level of doing their music. ... Mine just happened to resonate over the years, in one way and another, with a significant enough number of people so that I could do it professionally.

My feeling about school was that it interfered with my reading.

Music should be an elective experience. You should go, "I'm going to sit down and listen to some Beethoven, by God," and then you get to hear it.

Story is what's most important.

I never thought I'd write, because I'd never written anything in my whole life.

Even though I know how very far apart we are, it helps to think we might be wishing underneath the same bright star.