I don't know why, the very first word on my very first record is 'Jesus.' I still invoke him as an entity to reckon with.

I'm from South Jersey: The idea of eating a roll with olive oil and anchovies or some kind of sardine and drinking mint tea definitely comes from reading Paul Bowles.

I've always considered myself a writer.

My public life was so demanding that I wasn't doing the things that I deemed the most important.

You're not a rock 'n' roll person four hours a day or even when you're on stage. It's become the rhythm of your whole life.

My mission is to communicate, to wake people up, to give them my energy and accept theirs. We're all in it together, and I respond emotionally as a worker, a mother, an artist, and a human being with a voice. We all have a voice. We have the responsibility to exercise it, to use it.

The issue of gender was never my biggest concern; my biggest concern was doing good work. When the feminist movement really got going, I wasn't an active part of it because I was more concerned with my own mental pursuits.