If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer...When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep...An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

I longed to read everything I possibly could, and the things I read in turn produced new yearnings.

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody - Paris for me was a Mecca.

What I wanted to do in rock'n'roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

I was so involved in my boy-rhythms that I never came to grips with the fact that I was a girl. I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, "You can't be outside wrestling without a T-shirt on." It was a trauma.