By the time I was about ten, I had started to lose faith with church ways. I was educated in some ways by my high school government and history teachers.

I don't care how somebody gets their education, as long as they have one.

I do use reality because I want my work to feel real, I want it to feel heartfelt. I don't want to make it up and have it sound corny or unrelatable.

Ten minutes before you go onstage and you begin singing that torchy blues song, you may just be drinking a glass of water and brushing your teeth and doing some deep breathing.

Singers, musicians, and songwriters don't want to use the word "acting" because we want it to be more real than that - we want it to come from us: naturally, truly, really.

I was brought up in the Christian church and I studied in the teachings of Jesus. I believed in caring for others and trying to be kind. It's something I still have to work on every day.

Things are changing. They need to change more. It should not be of any note that a woman does something, because women do everything.

Artists are able to do well in the political arena because of fame, if only they can educate themselves.

If you just take one foot in front of the other without any protection, you may end up falling off the fence.

The line is very delicate and fine between being what one might call sane or insane, well or unwell.

Feminism has nothing to do with partisanship.

I think it's the pain and suffering that drive you to become an artist. The art itself should be the pain, sort of exorcising every demon and making you feel like you're a person that matters.

Morality is not a large, constructed *thing* you have or have not, but simply a capacity. Something you carry with you in your brain and in your hands.

We have to rethink how we're going to live on this earth - stop talking about the fact that we've got to have agriculture, we've got to have exports, because all that is the death of us.

All beauty is sad. [...] For it fades.

Life without music is unthinkable.

It isn't the absence of conscience or values that prevents us from being all we should be, it is simply the lack of moral courage.

I tried to write with someone else once before, but it was not successful.

How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!

We must perfect a worldwide system of accountability for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Yeah, well,” Nico said, “not giving people a second thought…that can be dangerous.