They did it to try and belittle me, to try and to take away my pride. But I went through the whole system with them. And at the end, I - I wanted the public to know that I was okay, even though I was hurting.

I would go back in time and do differently it is that. I would go back and ask, 'Why?' But I never did. I got up, he got up, we went on about our day. We never discussed the situation [with Dre]. Just, never.

These new metal bands are going out, getting drunk and going to strip clubs, and they'll be doing the same in thirty years. There isn't even an interesting self-destructive quality to it . . . it's just dumb.

Every single day the world seems like it is on the brink of falling apart. But then I look outside my window, and things look about the same as they did a week ago. It's almost a form of cognitive dissonance.

We need to finally accept that all sentient creatures are deserving of basic rights. I define basic rights as this -the ability to pursue life without having someone else's will involuntarily forced upon you.

If you make a record, you should ask yourself, 'Did it make someone cry, in a good way, not a bad way?' There should almost be subjective emotional criteria for evaluating work, instead of just profitability.

So where are the strongAnd who are the trusted?And where is the harmony?Sweet harmony -'cause each time I feel it slippin away, it just makes me wanna cry:What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?

I use drugs to work. I never use them to escape or for pleasure. When you turn to drugs, all you're doing is turning inside, anyway. I only use drugs for construction. It's like one of my architectural tools.

If you're in a painful place, be there, feel it, but don't stay stuck there. Do what you've got to do to get out of there. And if you're in a really joyful place, believe that that's not going to last either.

'American Idol' was just really a platform. What you do after that is what separates you from the show. And I've been working really hard, touring constantly, and building those fans. You've got to work hard.

Men like us who live on the edge and had this player life - and for even some that still do - we gotta respect women - we gotta understand that their position here is much bigger than what we might give them.

A good song has to have a great melody, and the lyrics have to touch my heart. Now, if it's just a little toe-tapper, got to make me feel good somehow or another, or when I sing it I can't make you feel good.

Whenever a natural disaster occurs, it is always the Red Cross that responds quickly and compassionately. I am honored to lend my voice to their cause, and thrilled to serve on the Celebrity Cabinet for 2010.

It feels like I am covering all aspects of what I do and operating in the gift God gave me. I believe God has freed me up to go in some other places because I am responsible and understand the power of music.

My music is almost like vomit! It's a horrible way to put it, but I feel it, I say it, and I doubt myself all the time throughout my whole life, but when it comes to music, I just don't. I don't doubt myself.

Gerard is just like me, but two meters tall. We're very alike; it's not for nothing that we were born on the same day, it's just that he was born 10 years later... he's a happy guy, healthy here, in the head.

I'm more of a debit card person, and I live in the 'now'. I don't like credit cards anymore. I try to live with whatever I can afford and don't try to put myself in an awkward position. I've done that before.

I don't think I thought I was going to go into music, and I don't think it hit me until I was 13 or 14, and then I was gone. Just like that. At that point, there was nothing else that could keep my attention.

Anytime I ever have met someone that was very angry or full of negativity, nine times out of ten, if you really take a good look at that person's life, there's probably not a whole lot of love going on there.

Oh my God, everyday is a constant struggle and battle. Especially with an artist like me, when what I am doing is not the in thing, it is harder to break someone like me. And I'm a woman too, it's ridiculous.

When my kid was five and playing with my camcorder. I don't like it. It makes it look fake looking, too much HD. I don't need to see your pores on TV, like why do I see your pores right here? That's not cool.

Although becoming a singer was my plan A after first hearing Whitney Houston when I was 17, I started off with plan B by going to the teacher-training college that my dad went to. It was a slow coming of age.

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.

The very first song I ever wrote was a song called 'Crazy' when I was 11 or 12 with my best girlfriends - we had a girl band. It was about loving a guy who everyone else thought you were crazy for being into.

As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot.

I do actually believe in love. I can't say that I'm 100 percent successful in that department, but I think it's one of the few worthwhile human experiences. It's cooler than anything I can think of right now.

I just let the songs tell me what to do - they are my guides, and they are the boss. So I am subservient to the songs, and I let them tell me what to do. I don't judge them; I just write whatever comes to me.

My favourite thing about live shows is you can make up new songs on the spot. Never played before, never again. And that's wonderful for me, because it frees me up to not have to worry about lyrics and stuff.

When I look back, I don't remember the best of the best. I don't remember arena shows with 20,000 people. I remember funky little bar gigs where nobody shows up. The weirdest of the weird are what you retain.

I like the idea that people have formed their own opinions. And of course once people meet me or talk to me their opinion totally changes because I'm much more that girl that you hang out with than you think.

There are female artists I can look at that I find more in common with than the male artists, because they're blending the pop, dance and theatricality... but currently there aren't a lot of guys who go there.

It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.

I try to give the music more of a campfire feel as opposed to a library atmosphere. I like when you can hear people hanging out in the songs and doing a little shuffling. It creates a feeling of participation.

It's not an anti-sex trip. Like, we're taking sex, which is probably another half of American entertainment, sex and violence, and we're projecting it, and we're saying this is the way everything is right now.

You need to be growing and getting better, and in L.A., it's so hard to get bookings. You literally have to pay clubs to book you. It's pay to play, and then you only get 30 minutes. That's no way to get good.

If you turn on the TV, you're going to get a certain palate, and if you go looking underneath the surface, there's a whole lot of stuff there that I think a lot of our generation would be really interested in.

Twerking is not feminism. Thats what I’m referring to. It’s not — it’s not liberating, it’s not empowering. It’s a sexual thing that you’re doing on a stage; it doesn’t empower you. That’s my feeling about it.

You just do you like when you're doing any other song. It's nothing different. Some people are like "How's it like working with Kendrick Lamar?" and really, it's like working with anyone else that I work with.

When I'm writing, it's the weirdest thing: it's not even a conscious process. I'm not even thinking when I write, and then all of a sudden, I'll have a song that makes me feel so much better than I did before.

I think music piracy is forcing many people to look at the live aspect of the record industry as an income and in many ways that's what sets apart good music and musicians from the fly by night pop sensations.

I just like food too much, and I don't want to change. I spent so much of childhood trying to change, and I just got sick of it... I don't want to look like Britney Spears, I just don't want to. She's hideous.

I decided years ago not to read stories about myself anymore. Each one is a potential minefield: Whatever it says, you're bound to take it the wrong way. Why do it if you know it's going to make you miserable?

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

I'm really glad I didn't have kids earlier, because I probably would have ignored them. I was so into my career. I could just go and play a ton of shows, night after night after night. I can't do that anymore.

We'd just signed with Arista, the record company. Arista was freaking about the phenomenon of tapers showing up at our shows. They were insisting that we put an end to this. And we just didn't want to do that.

Every freak has a mother. When I met Marilyn Manson I was struck by how nice he was. People are rarely as weird as you anticipate. Except for Courtney Love-who reminded me of that mad snake in The Jungle Book.

I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be... That being said, there's more work to be done... I still want to change the world, absolutely.

It's hard to be judgmental once you've been around the world... it's pretty hard to be anything but understanding, and I think it's good for everybody to get out and see someplace other than where you grew up.

Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes. But the less vulnerable we are because of privilege, the country we're born in, or the security we enjoy, the more vulnerable our souls are to apathy.

'90s fashion is awesome. Best of both worlds - you had power pop, like the Spice Girls and Shampoo. But then you had Nirvana and Hole. And you also had '90s dance music like N-Trance, who kind of blended both.

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