I know from an early age that I'm very comfortable in front of people. When I was a young girl, I'd love giving book reports.

I don't know why, the very first word on my very first record is 'Jesus.' I still invoke him as an entity to reckon with.

It's Steven's [Sebring] view of what he saw in traveling and working with me. But on another scale, I think the film [Dream of Life] is very humanistic: It touches on motherhood, death, birth, art, laundry, anger against the Bush administration... While I don't think it's the kind of film where one goes to find some of the darker, edgier aspects of life, the film was born of grief.

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

I have abandoned so many projects but in the '80s when I left public life to be married and have real children - I love my children and I would never sacrifice them for anything - I had to find a way to simultaneously be a mother and wife and fulfill my duties and still be true to myself as a writer.

All of my role models, whether it was the disciples, or John the Baptist or Arthur Rimbaud, slept under the stars.

I didn't begin my life in 1975 with 'Horses.' I recorded 'Horses' in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969.