One thing I did have under my belt was, my mother lost her mother when she was 11. She mourned her mother her whole life and made my grandmother seem present even though I never met her. I couldn't imagine how my mom could go on but she did, she took care of us, she worked two jobs and had four children. She was such a good example of how to conduct oneself in a time of grief. When I lost my husband, I tried to model myself as much as I could on her.

You don't want to OD on improvisation.

I think that there is an air of experience and aesthetic sophistication that weaves in with the amateur aspects of the film [Dream of Life]; it gives the film a certain elegance.

Punk rock is just another word for freedom.

I wasn't a stranger to hard times. I used to read the Bible - well, I still do, but when I was young I read the Bible quite a bit.

The best thing is to motivate people to do their own work. I'm not opposed to making money. But I started to play rock 'n' roll to motivate others, to shake things up, wake people up and to let other skinny, pimply marginalized weirdos know they're not alone.

Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.