The violence between women is unbelievable…women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.

And maybe she had certain beliefs that if you love somebody, [you’re] gonna like them too. And that isn’t necessarily true.

I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it.

Many people lock a part of themselves away. It’s a bit sacred.

I think even in a good marriage, especially if you stay together long enough, there are going to be events that happen.

I’m very at home working with mythology.

Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they’re little.

In real life I’m bone dry and when I play I’m a mango and in sex I’m starving to be a dripping mango

I find that in the 21st century, there’s not a lot of compassion for what other people are going through or the walk that they have to walk.

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...

There were times that I needed to go to battle, but how I went to battle wasn’t always the best way in.

I don’t see music as working.

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...

You’re just an empty cage girl, if you kill the bird.

So, you can make me come, that doesn’t make you Jesus.

When you don’t have people in your life pushing you, can you push yourself?

I think there’s a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer.

Things go wrong all the time; you can’t be precious about it.

I wanted to do something creatively, having been a beached whale for many months and nursing my daughter.

I think musically, if you talk to (drummer) Matt Chamberlain, he’ll tell you it’s really complicated rhythmically.

He said, first let’s just unzip your religion down.

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don’t fit into boxes.

The violence betwen women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.

For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they’re dykes, and they’re always good fun.

People assume that all artists make for terrible business people, but I’m in complete charge of my own career.

When it’s all said and done we will lose a piece to a carnivorous vegetarian

Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won’t have anything to complain about.

My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.

An interview will seem very sane to me, and I’ll find out that the journalist was laughing out of the side of his mouth half of the time.

I felt sidelined by the industry, by the preoccupation with finding something newer, younger.

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.

To Venus and Back,

Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.

When the mothers start to shatter, then everything just comes undone.

The key things are about power and about growing up and realizing as you grow up that there are consequences for the choices you make, especially when you get seduced by power.

There are two ways to wake up. You can wake up thinking about what you know, or you wake up thinking and saying ‘What can I learn?.’ That’s a very different approach.

I was very close to my mother as the youngest of three. She was my playmate.

It makes me think of mushroom pasta with dripping garlic bread and butter, not margarine, no margarine on this record, it’s all butter.

she said, these dead petals, honey, brought me here

Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that’s slightly different in order to get inspiration.

There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine.

What girls do to each other is beyond description. No chinese torture comes close.

I think you need to have people around you whose standard is high and who don’t accept anything less.

People listen to music the way they want to listen to music.

Adolescence is that time when I think, it can be- it’s the cruelest place on Earth. It can really be heartless.

Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.

I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.

I don’t want to give too much ink to foolish men.

I get painted quite a bit as a tragic figure because of some of the stuff that’s happened in my life.

My husband doesn’t know what my songs are about – even when they’re about him. He’s very British in that way. He doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t want to be told.