The issue of gender was never my biggest concern; my biggest concern was doing good work. When the feminist movement really got going, I wasn't an active part of it because I was more concerned with my own mental pursuits.

As a child I was such an intense daydreamer; I could be so gone that I had to be smacked to come back. They were really worried that I had some kind of catatonia or something because I would go so far out. Because all I wanted to do was talk to god as a child.

Nothing is a hobby - each discipline is its own world with its own high standards. Of course, every artist has 'minor works' that they do, but I don't think I have any 'minor disciplines.'

I always wear the same thing onstage.

No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.

When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.

I learned a lot from Arthur Rimbaud. People talk about how he wanted to be a seer and do that through the derangement of the senses. What they forget was that he also advocated, sternly and austerely, that one must be able to go through all that - and then articulate it.