Joni Mitchell

You feed it all your woes, the ghostly garden grows.

Inside your own self pity there you swim, in sinking down to drown her voice still haunts you, and only with your laughter can you win.

I'm drinking champagne, got the head phones up high, can't numb you out.

Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load.

He saw my complications and he mirrored me back simplified, and we laughed how our perfect world would always be denied.

Drag wasn't always counterculture.

Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.

Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks.

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

I'd had a rough childhood.

I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue.

I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.

The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.

The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet.

I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.

My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television.

In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.

I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.

I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist.

I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.

It's in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie's birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That's why I like Charlie Parker.

Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.

I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.

My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold.

My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words.

I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping. People do recognize you. They are kind of shocked. Some people like it. It makes them feel at ease. It confirms their hopes that you are in fact similar to them.

Musically, I don't think I'd ever dry up. I trust my musical invention.

I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities.

Musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song.