In a sense, it's less about seeing how high up I can vault than about seeing how deeply I can explore my potential...Ambition for me is about the willingness to work, the ability to mine my own soul fearlessly.

The first thing I did when I made a little bit of money as a singer was to buy myself an amber necklace. This is often the way we put together our lives, adding the striking qualities of others into our own character.

My whole career I played these girls sort of 18 to 23.

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.

Well, any time Im preparing for a performance or even a rehearsal, its as if in a way, like any other athletes, these are muscles that support the vocal cords which are just I believe cartilage. It demands a kind of constant warming up and a constant feeling of where is the voice today.

Being steeped in the process of learning and exploring keeps me from becoming too nervous. Partly it's about not getting bored.

I haven't really been able to transfer into that extraordinarily other worldly creature, other than I hope on stage.