I'm a mother, and that's really important. Today, the mother and the musician can sit next to each other. Even when the musician is out there in full swing, the mother doesn't get switched off.

Not everybody wants to have the same career. I think what's difficult is when you have two people that do something very, very similar and they both, say, want the limelight. That's very tricky.

Not everybody wants to have the same career. I think what’s difficult is when you have two people that do something very, very similar and they both, say, want the limelight. That’s very tricky.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.

I usually get myself into situations that cause sparks. I mean I'm a girl that likes the storms. I love feeling alive, I love walking out in the cold in my bare feet and feeling the ice on my toes.

Robert Plant asked me to marry him, but I said 'no.' I mean, you just don't want to marry someone you've wanted to do it with since you were thirteen, because, well, if he farts, I would, like, die!

I collect art books. I have hundreds and hundreds of them and they get me to start hearing things. Sometimes people look at them, but I find that visual art gets me listening, gets me hearing things.

There is an energy that you carry when you're nurturing another life where you're protecting first - and once you know that cub is out of the way of the hunter's gun, you can be a little more daring.

It's not as if the stories merge to a point where you think they are your life, but you do let them in the front door and the back door, and it's okay that sometimes certain characters stay for dinner.

I think that people who can't believe in faeries aren't worth knowing. I just think that alternate realities make you a good writer. If your work is any more than one dimension, you believe in faeries.

I think all the boys that write the screaming stuff would write the best love songs... because they have the most to hide. The guys that are in the most pain are usually the ones with the biggest hearts.

For a song cycle to work, you have to feel these things when you hear them and you either have an emotional reaction to it or you don't. The plotline is something that gets woven together in the backstory.

For a song cycle to work, you have to feel these things when you hear them and you either have an emotional reaction to it or you don't. The plotline is something that gets woven together in the back-story.

The word 'confession,' to me, means needing to be absolved. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not asking people to understand. I'd like to think that I tell stories and sometimes my life weaves through it.

I've never felt anything that moves me as much as my piano. I'm an emotional player. I don't really like people. I prefer my piano to people. It's totally reliable and it's alive. I can hear what it's saying.

It's about realizing, painfully, you've kept that voice inside yourself, locked away from even yourself. And you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces. You realize you've become your own jailer.

I am finding that vulnerability gives me great strength, because you're not hiding anymore. It's really about being a pioneer for myself, going into the places where I am not being taught. I have to teach myself.

If you can surrender your protection devices, in order to track the potentially raw and perhaps elusive emotions that are the song's DNA, then that is creative vulnerability, which is ultimately hugely empowering.

Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.

The romantic myth of the artist says that you are the Source. I have no illusion about that. Native Americans don't believe they are the Source. They have access to the Source. Endless access. But don't get confused.

When I was little, my mom tells me, I used to say things like, 'Mom do you hear the string section? Do you hear the string section?' And she would look at me and say, 'No honey, I don't know what you're talking about.'

I used to get really pissed off that my life was so dictated by when this Jesus guy was born and when he was dying every year. I felt really resentful that I couldn't get on with my own life because I was so busy with his.

I believe in eating. I think women especially have this fear of eating, and I think there is a whole euphoric plane you can rise to when you have a good meal. You sit down and with every bite you honestly just say thank you.

Women shouldn’t deny their dark side. Sometimes those demons are frightening and sometimes they’re beautiful. You’ll have to approach them. Drink a glass of wine with them, take them for a walk on the beach, examine yourself.

In our minds, love and lust are really separated. It's hard to find someone that can be kind and you can trust enough to leave your kids with, and isn't afraid to throw her man up against the wall and lick him from head to toe.

Your worst enemies are made when you ignore people. Those boys in America who shot dead classmates recently, didn't do that because they woke up with a positive self image that morning and then felt like slaughtering their friends.

The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me, troubles me as a minister's daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.

For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. I made a conscious choice when I put (the song) 'Me and a Gun' on the record not to stay a victim anymore.

I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom's family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car - it was the late sixties - and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.

The way I see it, the men that I'm with, whoever they are, it's like look, you have to accept the fact that I like ice cream, and I know it shows up on my hips but if you can't accept that, then leave. Go away, toodles. It is non-negotiable.

When you're in your 20s, there's maybe a little room for you to not be at the top of your artistic game, if you look good on a magazine cover. When you're not on the cover of the magazines anymore, then you realize that the work has to be great.

If you can't create physical life, you find a life force. If that's in music, that's in music. I started to find this deep, primitive rhythm, and I started to move to it. And I held hands with sorrow, and I danced with her, and we giggled a bit.

This whole Christian theology thing is that god came down to experience life through his son. Well, how's he experiencing life if he doesn't get laid? Give me a break. And why would he not get laid, as he created the apparatus in the first place?

You have to be clear what your message is and what you're doing. I mean, Miley Cyrus is an amazing talent, and sometimes you kind of just want to say, 'We know you're not Hannah Montana anymore. We know that, my dear. My darling. Now, go be great.'

It's been a thrilling journey - I have had to really learn that an orchestra is an entity - it's a creature. I have been calling it the dragon and the conductor is the dragon tamer. And you just have to... ride and don't let go and you will be fine.

It's been a thrilling journey - I have had to really learn that an orchestra is an entity - it's a creature. I have been calling it the dragon and the conductor is the dragon tamer. And you just have to ... ride and don't let go and you will be fine.

We can all choose to become our potential, not just talk about it or dream about it. But daily, make a shift whereby we begin living and being our potential. With each day, that potential can expand because we are open to learning something every day.

In life, sometimes everything falls into place, and sometimes everything just falls to pieces. The key is to begin creating with these fallen pieces. By improvising, you'll create something magical that might be the best thing you've ever accomplished

From in the shadow she calls. And in the shadow she finds a way, finds a way. And in the shadow she crawls, clutching her faded photograph. My image under her thumb. Yes with a message for my heart. She’s been everybody else’s girl maybe one day she’ll be her own.

Years go by Will I still be waiting For somebody else to understand Years go by If I'm stripped of my beauty And the orange clouds Raining in head Years go by Will I choke on my tears Till finally there is nothing left One more casualty You know we're too easy Easy Easy

There are quite a few very funny people in my life. You know those people who don't mean to be funny, they just come out with these zingers that just make you howl with laughter. Usually you find these people in the road crew. A good crew is a key to a healthy funny bone.

Being able to hear an opinion. And then how to apply that opinion is something I am learning and working with every day. What can be tricky is how to differentiate a good suggestion that you should apply to your work [from] someone's personal taste at their opinionated best.

My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.

Sometimes you are forced to defend your beliefs. Sometimes you are forced to look at relationships that aren't positive anymore. There are times when I have had to make peace with the fact that I am at war. And sometimes you have to fight those who do not want love to conquer all.

I don't want to sit on the sidelines and not value the gift of being here. Instead of the idea of time ticking away, the grains of sand running out, I try to think of time as giving me another grain of sand, another gift. So time passing is an accumulation, rather than a diminishing.

If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn't you like to think that's not all there is? That you haven't hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them?

That's the thing about letting old lovers go. You don't stop loving some of them. There are a couple you love no less than you ever did. Not to mention namesbut I'm still in love with a couple. You're not going to try and make it work again, but if they needed you, you'd drop everything.

I'm really into moderation. Too much of anything will harm you in the end. Too much sugar. Too much pasta. I'm into drugs as a teaching tool, which is why I only take hallucinogenics. I mean, it's not like I've never done cocaine, but, on the whole, if I can't see dancing elephants then I'm not interested.

I think everyone understands grief, the journey it takes us on, whether it's the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a disappointment. Some people don't deal with it, the power of it. Some do. Some feel the weight of it and it informs their choices. I've had to open up to grief in different contexts.

It's [a miscarriage] all very thief-in-the-night. No one really knows what to say. You go into the emergency room, you think you're going to be a mum and you walk out empty. It's all neat and tidy, there's this potential being in your life and you're empty - all cleaned up and put back together, but completely shattered.

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