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.

Often the simplest song is the hardest to write.

We're a culture more than ever that wants proof of everything, we want things fast, and someone sends you an email, you want to answer in five minutes. We have to allow ourselves nothingness, in our relationships too.

I've lost lots of men in my life, besides my mother, which is a whole different loss.

Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free.

I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.

I wasn't attractive, I wasn't very verbal, I wasn't very smart in school. I wasn't anything that showed the world I was something special, but I had this tremendous hope all the time. I had this tremendous spirit that kept me going... I was a happy child, because I had this feeling that I was going to go beyond my body physical... I just knew it.