Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)

Everybody's got to reclaim these thingspoetry, rock'n'roll, political activismand it's got to be done over and over again. It's like eating: you can't say,'Oh, I ate yesterday'.You have to eat again.

Ms. It sounds like a sick bumblebee, it sounds frigid. I mean, who the hell would ever want to stick his hand up the dress of somebody who goes around calling herself something like Ms.? It's all so stupid.

My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills... So my parents always struggled.

I was always a tomboy as a kid. I always had boyfriends. I was just a regular girl growing up in the late '50s and early '60s, but I was never really attracted to what the girls were attracted to: makeup, my appearance, homemaking.

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.

If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, "Don't film me anymore," [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them; he just respected their wishes.