I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

I think some fans want everything to stay they same because they want to stay the same.

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they're here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it.

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.

I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance.

Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to - in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet - very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I'll fit whatever I'm trying to say around a melody.

The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.

I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that's going on.

And I always laugh at that, because I think I've always been doing what I want to do since Day 1.

The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY will always be his boss.

I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.

What I try to keep in mind is that there are going to be a lot of articles that are going to be misrepresentative of what I'm about as a person and as a writer.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

I'm doing it because I choose it. And if it's not working, I can make a change.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

They're different kinds of challenges depending upon what phase of life I'm in.

Making a movie requires 20 to 500 people to make and a lot of money and the stakes are a lot higher.

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me.

At one point, I was just perceived as only being angry, but now I'm being perceived as angry, peaceful, and spiritual.

I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.

Down the road, I'll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.

I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.

A lot of preconceived notions that I had about fame and status and money and joy and pain, and all of these things that I thought I knew, I didn't.

Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye, people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously.

Alpha men are very turned on by the alpha woman, really high chemistry, really fun to work with, probably really fun to have affairs with, but there's not sustainable harmony in that lack of complement. There can only be one person in the driver's seat.

America's a very traumatized society.

Anger has been a really big deal for women: how can we express it without feeling that, as the physically weaker sex, we won't get killed. The alpha-woman was burned at the stake and had her head chopped off in days of old.

As a teen, I was both anorexic and bulimic.

Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.

Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. For someone who is a love addict, it's debilitating.

But I love to entertain. My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

Courage and willingness to just go for it, whether it is a conversation or a spontaneous trip or trying new things that are scary - it is a really attractive quality.