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.

People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.

I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn't mean that we didn't have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working, and had great senses of humor.

I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library, and that was it. There was nothing else.

I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realize that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.

Life isn't some vertical or horizontal line -- you have your own interior world, and it's not neat.

In any performance, you're on stage for two hours, and there's 40 seconds or maybe a whole five minutes where you feel like the whole universe is in place, and you've gone even beyond the universe that you know.