I'm more concerned with the work people do than their gender. When I was younger, I was pretty judgmental. Things had to be a certain way. Now I just want to see the work. It doesn't matter who does it.

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.

The film [Dream of Life] is not really an amateur work, despite the fact that none of us have ever done anything like this before; aesthetically, none of us are amateurs.

I'm old-fashioned. I think William Blake and people in the Renaissance people were multi. Look at da Vinci, he was involved in science; and Michelangelo was dabbling in poetry. Both of them were painters and sculptors but they also involved themselves with architecture. I honestly don't know what happened in the '60s and '70s. If you sang rock and roll in America at that time or were involved in expressing yourself through music like that, then many thought you couldn't possibly be an artist. That thinking is archaic.

We all make choices. Believe me, I would like to write the hit of the world. It's not like I have any desire to be in the shadows. My vision isn't marketing. Some people want to sell 6 million albums. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not what I do. I'd rather look at a piece of work and say it's great rather than it's successful.

People need space to air out their thoughts, to have a sense of themselves - unfettered by anything.

If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail.