I'm interested in stories and the dark side of peoples' minds.

So now I don't have time to practice drums. It's been five years since I've touched the drums.

Blood and death. That moves me.

Come to think of it, the way I play is like a drum machine- very mechanical.

I was playing in other rock bands. Any of those bands didn't last long.

Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around '84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn't make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.

I still think that I'm playing instruments, not just pushing buttons and there it goes. It's interactive and alive with the sound and the manipulation and it plays like instruments.

Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great.

I always wanted to get out of Tokyo and in 1977, New York seemed like the most interesting place to visit. I didn't intend to live here- I just wanted to get out and see what was happening. I just happened to stay here then.

I really didn't intend to be a musician when I left Japan.

The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings.

The most important thing is that it's much more fun to play in a band than to be in an audience in a club. That's the main thing I think, that you can do it.

Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum.

Because it's dance music, you can't really have a lot of changing in there. It's really not for me because there's too much repetition. I like more diversity.

I'm interested in stories and the dark side of peoples' minds.

Somebody gave me this drum machine and somebody else asked me to program something for a project. I really liked programming and I was really interested in using the drum machine.

I've done some music for films and I really enjoy doing it.

I got tired of different drum sounds so you buy different effects for more manipulation.

With a rock band, you play the same things over and over and over.

A sailing ship is no democracy you dont caucus a crew as to where youll go anymore than you inquire when theyd like to shorten sail.

It's not easy being number two. As a marketer, you have limited choices - you can pretend you're not defined by the market leader, or, you can embrace your position and go directly after your nemesis.

It was so much fun playing simple American bluegrass. I got to meet Doc Watson.

I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

Doctors cannot afford to provide care at the rate of reimbursement that Medicare insists that they accept.

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter.

I feel like this: When you call me in to do something with you, you must want me to do soul-singing. Because you know I'm a soul singer. Don't ask me to come in and rap. And don't ask me to come in and sing pop.

That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.

Bullying is for people who have no confidence at all. So everyone being bullied please remember they are scared of you. You have something they dont and thats what makes them bully you. Dont let their words affect you because they are the ones needing confidence not you.

There was no wind in all that sweep of sky.

If we want the most effective fighting force, we need to pick the most qualified capable man for the job, even if it's a woman.

Advantage is a better soldier than rashness.

It's part of me, Scotland. I'm still immersed in it even though I am not there.

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

Capitalism does a number of things very well: it helps create an entrepreneurial spirit; it gets people motivated to come up with new ideas, and that's a good thing.

I just heard the latest joke about my hair: 'Do you know what that is on her head? It's a steering wheel to drive the state.'

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.

Television has created a nation of news junkies who tune in every night to get their fix on the world.

Avoidance is paying forward that which I would be much wiser to pay off.

I had a great editor, Rebecca Corbett, from the time I was a city reporter right through to the years I worked on the 'Sun's' enterprise reporting team.

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

For a while, I was drawing on good paper, but now I've gone back to the bad stuff. I put matte medium on it. If you put matte medium on it, it seals up, so it doesn't really matter.

When 'Romeo and Juliet' came along, I fell in love with the way that it was written and how innocent and vulnerable it was and how different it was from 'True Grit.' I really liked that.