I was brought up in the Christian church and I studied in the teachings of Jesus. I believed in caring for others and trying to be kind. It's something I still have to work on every day.

As a writer, you look for someplace to start. Once you have a beginning and you've written the first two sentences, nothing else will ever change it.

When I was sixteen, I began to think outside the box of my small town. Not that the people in my small town are in a box - they're not! There's a brilliant college there, and I had brilliant teachers from that college. But in terms of a conservative upbringing, which I did have within my own family, I just began to question things and to think for myself.

Singers, musicians, and songwriters don't want to use the word "acting" because we want it to be more real than that - we want it to come from us: naturally, truly, really.

By the time I was about ten, I had started to lose faith with church ways. I was educated in some ways by my high school government and history teachers.

To me, the housewife who puts her teacups unwashed in the sink because her husband won't wash them, is political. Every act is political: the things you do, as well as the things you omit doing; the things you refuse to do; the things you fail to do; the things you say, as well as the things you don't say.

If you just take one foot in front of the other without any protection, you may end up falling off the fence.