I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.

Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.

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.

We have to believe, as creators - just like a doctor doing heart surgery has to believe that he can save that person's life. You have to believe that your pursuit is not just a noble pursuit, but a necessary and inborn pursuit to uncover something.

After writing all day I go for a walk and see a piece of architecture i want to photograph and i have to take a picture and later a poem comes in my mind.

I actually had another motivation for letting Steven [Sebring] film us. After I'd been out of the public eye for 16 years, lost my friends and lost my husband, some of my confidence had been undermined. Steven made the process of filming fun; I could pretend that we were in something like Don't Look Back.

What a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had.