The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart - those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.

I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.

That's what we [outsiders] feel America is really about - the kind of crazed ravings of the Christian right - when it's probably something quite different.

At the end, we're kind of observers - creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I'm pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out.

I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.

I'm not a misogynist, so you can dispense with that. I think I've done wonders for the feminist movement.