It was my 16th birthday-my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do-write songs and sing them to people. [...] Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.

Rock and menopause do not mix. It is not good, it sucks and every day I fight it to the death, or, at the very least, not let it take me over.

That's the words: "So I'm back to the velvet underground" - which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff - "back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was."

By the time I was five, I was a little diva.

Your graciousness is what carries you. It isn't how old you are, how young you are, how beautiful you are, or how short your skirt is. What it is, is what comes out of your heart. If you are gracious, you have won the game.

Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.

If you can find a passion at a young age, somewhere between fifteen and thirty, if you can find that passion, I can pretty much guarantee you that you can be sixty-five and still love that passion and still have a reason to dance out of bed and down the hall every morning.