I’ve always considered it a great privilege to be a musician, I’ve never lost sight of that.

The research phase was really fascinating - I'm not a closeted nerd, I'm an out-of-the-closet nerd.

I can't remove the autobiographical slant from the things I write. You always bring yourself into what you're writing.

I don't think women's prisons are environments for dance routines, and I don't think mass murder is humorous.

I would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics.

When I originally wrote "Jealousy," it was more like an exercise to try to write a girl-group kind of pop song. It was really contrary to most of the material I'd ever written. I didn't pay much attention to the song after I'd recorded it. I didn't really perform it at all the last 20 years. When it came time to make the new record, I decided to make peace with the song and have fun with it.

Literature gives us a window into other people's experiences in other places, in other times, so I thought it would be really interesting to investigate how different people had written about motherhood, and childhood.