It's striking how commercially viable that impulse for instant intimacy is right now, especially in songs and writing.

I think that if you have a strong narrative, if the idea of the song can be boiled down to the basics, it won't change that much.

Some girls are taught to be sexy.

You have to defend your honor. And your family.

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.

It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.

I was always inventing characters and making up stories.