My father was a preacher in Maryland and we had crab feasts - with corn on the cob, but no beer, being Methodist - outside on the church lawn.

When one doesn't want the limelight, but is also creative in developing whatever it is they are, then you can have two equal people that aren't competing against each other. I think when you are in the same field, it's difficult to leave it outside and not compete. Then when the doors are closed; that pervades everything.

I'm not like a poker player. I'm not into bluff. My way is to look someone in the eye and tell them the way I'm intending to go. My cards are always on the table.

I usually get myself into situations that cause sparks. I mean I'm a girl that likes the storms. I love feeling alive, I love walking out in the cold in my bare feet and feeling the ice on my toes.

Guys would sleep with a bicycle if it had the right color lip gloss on. They have no shame. They're like bull elks in a field.

I am the worst influence. If you can't handle your vices, then I am the Devil.

I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. We're both Leos, we understand each other.

I've had to keep exploring different ways of presenting the music so I don't repeat myself.

When you don't have people in your life pushing you, can you push yourself?

I think there's a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer.

Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.

At 15, I knew someone whose mother cooked macrobiotic, so I persuaded my mother to go macrobiotic with me.

My favorite saying is, 'If it's too loud, turn it up.'

If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn't you like to think that's not all there is? That you haven't hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them?

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.

My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.

There is an energy that you carry when you're nurturing another life where you're protecting first - and once you know that cub is out of the way of the hunter's gun, you can be a little more daring.

There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.

Being able to still make records is a privilege. I don't take it casually.

Even if everything else is downplayed, I'll wear good shoes.

I have never smoked and have always drunk a lot of water, but cleanse, tone and moisturise every day? No way!

I've been known to throw watermelons, backstage, at people who are giving me news I don't want to hear. But I never aim for the head.

My father has a pragmatic mind. He marched with Dr. King in the '60s, and he's very much for women's rights.

There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.

The key things are about power and about growing up and realizing as you grow up that there are consequences for the choices you make, especially when you get seduced by power.

Romance is important to me, and to have a romance with your husband takes a bit of doing. The key is to make sure your partner misses you. That means you have to take yourself away.

Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they're little.

Many people lock a part of themselves away. It's a bit sacred.

For a song cycle to work, you have to feel these things when you hear them and you either have an emotional reaction to it or you don't. The plotline is something that gets woven together in the back-story.

I want to be an integrated woman.

I don't know if the average person really has faith in Washington anymore.