I always wanted to be an artist, writer and poet since I was seven, and one has to live long enough to evolve as an artist and do one's finest work.

I wasn't taking drugs or drinking. I was working and working and working. But I wasn't writing anything.

The thing I've always liked about performing is that I decide what I want to wear, whether I want to comb my hair.

I was at one of the lowest points of my life when we started this film [Dream of Life], except, of course, that I had two great children. But the film is not documenting a decline; it's documenting a rise up - first baby steps and then big steps up. The worst that could have ever happened to me had already happened. And so the film is on the ascent. And I think that gives it a nice spirit.

When I started making music, we'd lost a lot of our great people. Rock was moving in a direction I didn't like. Rock was my generation's revolutionary, sexual, poetic, and political voice, but it had become corporatized. It was going into stadiums. It was so far removed from its basic roots.

The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.

Even as a child, I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to wear red lipstick.