I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.

My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.

You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.

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 heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate.

I see music as fluid architecture.

The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.

Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.

I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world.

I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.

I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy.

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.

But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability.

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.

At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.

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

I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

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

My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

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

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.

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

You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n' roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn't roll. He has got no swing in him.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right.

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 see bodies as individual things.

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

What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.

My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.

Van Gogh was impulsive.

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.

Drag wasn't always counterculture.

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

I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.

America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill.