Maybe I'm just purely lucky. If I've come up against obstacles I've always found another way around it.

I feel like it's very important that I'm doing what I'm doing, and I want to keep honoring that and try and do it as honestly as I can.

First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too.

I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other. I've always been very affected by politics, society, but I never got to a place as a writer where I felt like I could begin to deal with such things and do it well.

[Writing] has helped me meet people.

You can sing a very aggressive word in such a way that it's very funny. You can change words, completely turn them around on their head so that they mean exactly the opposite of what they are written down. There are endless possibilities which I think Diamanda Galás is doing already. She turns everything upside down by the way she sings it. She makes you feel nauseous or horrified or ridiculous just by her voice. I think that's an incredible power.

I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.