I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.

I always wrote like rock 'n' roll. And I always listen to rock 'n' roll as poetry.

I'm more concerned with the work people do than their gender. When I was younger, I was pretty judgmental. Things had to be a certain way. Now I just want to see the work. It doesn't matter who does it.

I don't think public life in and of itself can destroy you. I think it's the way people react to it, and some people are more sturdy than others... I don't think any one faction can be blamed for a person's self destruction - a certain amount of that has to be innate.

My mother answers all my fan mail.

I reflected on the fact that no matter how good I aspired to be, I was never going to achieve perfection

As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the 70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility.