The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY will always be his boss.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.

A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance.

I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.

We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect.

Making a movie requires 20 to 500 people to make and a lot of money and the stakes are a lot higher.

They're different kinds of challenges depending upon what phase of life I'm in.

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to - in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet - very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they're here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

And I always laugh at that, because I think I've always been doing what I want to do since Day 1.

I'm doing it because I choose it. And if it's not working, I can make a change.

Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it.

I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.

As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I'll fit whatever I'm trying to say around a melody.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

At one point, I was just perceived as only being angry, but now I'm being perceived as angry, peaceful, and spiritual.

I think some fans want everything to stay they same because they want to stay the same.

The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.

I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

Down the road, I'll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that's going on.

I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.

I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old.

I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.

What I try to keep in mind is that there are going to be a lot of articles that are going to be misrepresentative of what I'm about as a person and as a writer.

You live, you learn.

I wish people could achieve what they think would bring them happiness in order for them to realize that that's not really what happiness is.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there's been a liberating force that's come from it.

Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. For someone who is a love addict, it's debilitating.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

To me the biggest irony of this lifetime that I'm living is that for someone who thrives in the public eye in the creative ways that I do, I actually don't enjoy being in the public eye.

But I love to entertain. My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly.

In LA, where I live, it's all about perfectionism. Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

I'm a liability to them - I'm a woman, I'm empowered, I'm an artist. I've had executives who can't come to my shows they're so scared of me. I've been a thorn in many people's sides just by existing.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

As a teen, I was both anorexic and bulimic.