I hope and believe we are paving a better future for female artists to come.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

I hope and believe we are paving a better future for female artists to come.

I'm used to adversity and working really well in difficult situations. It was hard for me to accept the success.

The flower has opened, has been in the sun and is unafraid. I'm taking more chances; I'm bold and proud.

I'm glad I made a piece of art that can be interpreted so widely. Art is always interpreted subjectively.

For me music is a vehicle to bring our pain to the surface, getting it back to that humble and tender spot where, with luck, it can lose its anger and become compassion again.

I don't like to sit and bask in my own awards. Awards represent artistic death to me.

When you're a plebeian you want success, and when you're successful you want to be a plebeian again.

Just watching my cats can make me happy.

I've left Bethlehem, and I feel free. I've left the girl I was supposed to be, and some day I'll be born.

Feminists were psyched that I had armpit hair.

The older I get, the more I see that there really aren't huge zeniths of happiness or a huge abyss of darkness as much as there used to be. I tend to walk a middle ground.

The monsters are in your own head.

Being a writer is a very private, internal process. Ultimately I am more the writer, being an introvert.

But at the age of 44, I sure hope to be a better businesswoman. I want to get the music straight to my fans.

But looking back, the fact was that I had a couple of big hits too quickly and it was simply too much for an introvert like me to handle.

Didgeridoo was something I picked up while I was on tour in Australia with Peter Gabriel in '93. I found out later that it's only meant to be played by men.

I find that the older I get, the more I see that there really aren't huge zeniths of happiness or a huge abyss of darkness as much as there used to be.

I like doing the crossword puzzle in the New York Times, not watching E! on TV.

I see my albums as working diaries, as living scrapbooks of me and my life.

I struggled with being in the public eye, losing my anonymity when my star rose quickly in the late 90's. But I need the challenge of showing up and getting up there to spill my guts and connect with my loyal folks.

I think it's important to find the little things in everyday life that make you happy.

I think of my shows as family reunions. I give 100% every time. I just do. It's a huge therapeutic release. Also I love my touring family. And I love my audiences very much.

I wanted to be a cheerleader, like my sister was - all the most popular and beautiful girls are cheerleaders and I wanted that, and it demolished this vision of myself. That's when I found the piano, when music saved me; that's when I first attempted to write my own songs.

I was curious and hungry at a young age, and jazz was such a mystery to me, an ocean where you can express yourself in the moment. It represented freedom, it represented wearing wings and going somewhere with music.

I'm a songwriter who's put my childhood memories and teenage angst into songs.

I'm accepting I'm not living that younger, dreamed version of myself in the big city.

People have become less discriminating listeners, which is tragic, really. There's a lot of emperor's new clothes out there, whether they're female or male solo acts. That bothers me. It's hard to break through, and it's like climbing Mount Everest if you actually do.

Walking is magic. Can't recommend it highly enough. I read that Plato and Aristotle did much of their brilliant thinking together while ambulating. The movement, the meditation, the health of the blood pumping, and the rhythm of footsteps... this is a primal way to connect with one's deeper self.

The monsters are in your own head

Our planet is a tiny atom in god's kingdom.

But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

I got to sit down with people who I admired, and have conversations with some of the greatest thinkers and artists and performers. It's a huge privilege for me to be a journalist.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.

Because when the film was first mooted, the Beatles didn't like the idea at all. In fact they wouldn't have any part in it. And when Brian had committed them, it was part of a deal he did with United Artists, I think.

Artists are like everybody else.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

My proudest achievement has been the success of the shows and artists I have been involved with, because they were made in Britain.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

I didn't want to save art - I respected the older artists too much to think art needed saving. But I knew it was finished, even though, at that time, I didn't know what I would do.