I’ve been known to throw watermelons, backstage, at people who are giving me news I don’t want to hear. But I never aim for the head.

There’s a side to this industry that nurtures divas who can’t write. It’s a big business.

After a while of getting jerked around, you realize what the business is really made up of.

The pop world has really opened its doors.

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...

Sometimes you have to do what you don’t like to get to where you want to be.

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.

I’ve carved out a career for myself really as a writer.

I have built my world through Native American mythology.

When one doesn’t want the limelight, but is also creative in developing whatever it is they are, then you can have two equal people that aren’t competing against each other. I think when you are...

You know that saying, bad things dont happen to good people?. Thats a lie.

I have so many different personalities in me and I still feel lonely.

Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.

I don’t really cook. There are caterers, and my husband cooks.

My brother was a fantastic cheerleader for my development as a musician. He was almost 10 years older than me and would really push me to develop as a songwriter.

It’s fun to write your set list 20 minutes before and keep the crew very much on their toes.

Women must understand that simply attacking or hating men is just another form of disempowerment. A woman has to realize that when she makes a man crawl it doesn’t give her power.

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...

If I was writing songs just for me I’d only play them in my living room, alone.

I became a mom at 37 and having a child has been an emancipation for me.

At 15, I knew someone whose mother cooked macrobiotic, so I persuaded my mother to go macrobiotic with me.

There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world.

It’s as if the horses have come to take us back, to descend, to find the dark side. By dark I mean what’s hidden, not necessarily satanic.

I know I’m an acquired taste – I’m anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.

Some of the biggest advocates for feminism seem to believe that in order to feel powerful you have to make another woman subservient, and that is not what feminism is about at all.

Romance is important to me, and to have a romance with your husband takes a bit of doing. The key is to make sure your partner misses you. That means you have to take yourself...

My father has a pragmatic mind. He marched with Dr. King in the ’60s, and he’s very much for women’s rights.

I like cosy, intimate houses.

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...

If mankind recognizes that war is impossible…that all national rivalries are foolish…if they get together any kind of an extension of detente… then we may pull out of it all the better for it.

Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.

This was a time frame when dance music and clubs were having a real impact on culture, and it had an impact on me.

I was two and a half when I first climbed up and sat at a piano.

There’s a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.

My childhood was extreme.

Anger is natural. It’s part of the force. You just have to learn to hang out with it.

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...

My father was a preacher in Maryland and we had crab feasts – with corn on the cob, but no beer, being Methodist – outside on the church lawn.

I’m a hard worker. I get my hands dirty.

Being able to still make records is a privilege. I don’t take it casually.

Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.

I’m obsessed with crocodiles and getting eaten by one. When I hear that someone’s been eaten by a crocodile or shark, I just get all gooey. I start salivating.

As a songwriter, I’m gathering clues and possibilities all the time, whether I see a piano that day or not. I’ve tried to explain to people how I collect these dispatches, because I think anybody...

I don’t mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else’s object.

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...

I don’t feel I’m as good a mum as my mum was.

I like involved projects.

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...

I grew up in dirt-poor hillbilly country. We lived this dry-below-the-waist kind of scene. If you were a sensual woman you were in league with that which is un-Christlike. Where I come from, a cockroach...