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.

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.

Strange - is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.

A work will only have deep resonance if the kind of darkness I can generate is something that is resident in me already.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

This is an area you always need to address when you're dealing with Dracula is the fact that there is something kind of attractive in his darkness - which there isn't in other horror characters.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

But I notice that there is a lack of darkness in my movies and I don't know where that comes from.

I think seeing Pryor's first movie, Live In Concert, when I was in high school changed my life. Pryor really put the heart in darkness for me.

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.

And suddenly, like light in darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

I wondered vaguely if this was when it would end, whether I would pull up tonight's darkness like a quilt and be dead and at peace evermore.

This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness.

In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.