I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.

In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.

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

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.

Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.

When I started making music, we'd lost a lot of our great people. Rock was moving in a direction I didn't like. Rock was my generation's revolutionary, sexual, poetic, and political voice, but it had become corporatized. It was going into stadiums. It was so far removed from its basic roots.

The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.