I never really wanted to be a singer - not with any longevity. But I always wanted to be a writer.

That's what artists do, that's what poets do - we all do it. We start with something, and sometimes we destroy everything that we've made in order to get to the core place where we started from.

In 1974, when I started working with the material that became Horses, a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

I gave you a wrist watch, baby, and you wouldn't even give me the time of day.

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.

I felt alien my whole life but I didn't feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender.

Talking to god and coming back because that's what we have to do. That's your responsibility as a director, as an artist, as a performer. Your responsibility is back again to your people.