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For your kindness, I'm in debt to you. For your selflessness, my admiration.
I don't enjoy the work that I do. It's just that it's not self-sustaining anymore. The way that I like to make records - they're expensive records to make and just can't afford to do it anymore.
By calling it a memoir, I meant is as a collection of memories. I thought it was (a more) artful (title) than documentary.
I don't have a lot of thrilling anecdotes about my career or personal life. All the stuff that is interesting is private and I wouldn't want people to know.
I would never do a printed memoir. I've been asked to publish a memoir from years by different publishers and literary agents. I think it wouldn't be great for me because all I'd really want to talk about it music and I'd rather just play it.
I think I don't invest so much time in thinking about people's sexuality. I just take people as individuals.
I think I have a really diverse audience. I've had people from all sorts of sexual persuasions.
When I originally wrote \'Jealousy,\' it was more like an exercise to try to write a girl-group kind of pop song. It was really contrary to most of the material I'd ever written. I didn't pay much attention to the song after I'd recorded it. I didn't really perform it at all the last 20 years. When it came time to make the new record, I decided to make peace with the song and have fun with it.
I've never sold my publishing. I have 100% control of all of my publishing and that includes everything, every use of my songs.
When it came time to sequence the album, the new arrangements really demanded a different order. They were so different than they were before that the old sequence didn't work anymore.
I've had a large gay following for many years and have been quite aware of that.
I've walked these streets, in a carnival of sights to see. All the cheap thrill seekers, the vendors & the dealers, they crowded around me. Have I been blind? Have I been lost, inside myself and my own mind? Hypnotized, mesmerized, by what my eyes have seen? I've walked these streets, in a spectacle of wealth & poverty. In the diamond market, the scarlet welcome carpet that they just rolled out for me.
Im going to be shaking my booty when Im 55.
I feel we all have the obligation, myself. I want to live in a more humane, civilized society, and I feel like the only way we're going to achieve that is if we all take it upon ourselves. I just wish we could be a more caring society. I feel like we're social Darwinists who believe that everyone has to make it on their own. But the reality is that we all don't start out on the same footing.
I think the most enduring lesson I was taught through my experiences of being a Girl Scout was that I was a member of a larger community. I out-grew my uniforms and badges years ago, but the memories of visiting nursing homes or organizing Earth Day tree plantings or my summers camping with girls from all different backgrounds will stay with me always.
I've always considered it a great privilege to be a musician, I've never lost sight of that.
Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.
TV holds a close second to cars for destroying our society. It's a failed experiment.
For they told you life is hard<br />Misery from the start,<br />It's dull, it's slow, it's painful<br />But I tell you life is sweet<br />In spite of the misery<br />There's so much more, be grateful<br />So, who will you believe<br />Who will you listen to<br />Who will it be<br />'Cause it's high time that you decide<br />It's time to make up your own<br />Your own state of mind<br />Oh they told you life is long<br />Be thankful when it's done<br />Don't ask for more, be grateful<br />But I tell you life is short<br
I've raised my daughter with no television.
My mother was a single working mother; she started having children very young. There was a tension inside her about who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do and how she couldn't achieve the things she wanted to.
I've found out how overwhelming the media is and the way it drills things into your head, it's almost like a mind control. If I could control prople's minds, I'd like to put something useful in.
I think of myself as a musician and not a celebrity. Celebrity status is something you have to deliberately pursue - I couldn't imagine myself seeking that.
The research phase was really fascinating - I'm not a closeted nerd, I'm an out-of-the-closet nerd.
It's really wonderful to be able to be nobody, and then have a moment when I can be somebody, and then go right back to being nobody again.
It's funny, I remember doing the Johnny Carson show, and, uh, I couldn't afford my rent.
I'm on this search trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I have to say to people.
I would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics.
I wish I had appreciated my youth - I should have worn tighter clothing when I could have!
I don't want to live in a culture of despair. I'd like to live in a culture of hope.