Before I was on medication, the mania was so bad that I couldn't concentrate, so although I'd feel very creative, I could never really finish a piece of work because my mind was moving so fast.

Why wear pants when you can wear a muumuu?

I'm shameless, and I love a pun. There's a lot of Beth puns.

ABBA was a direct influence on me.

You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There's nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.

A weird thing about Gossip that I've always said: 'If I weren't in this band, I would never listen to it.' But I would go see it. It's a band you would go see that you don't necessarily listen to. We've always wanted to do a live album because personally, I think we're a way better band live than on record.

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.

All this fashion stuff - who's cool now - is just a bigger version of the cool kids versus the nerds.

I was always being told off at school. The teachers would say: 'Everyone's talking, but you're the one I can hear.'

You know, either I'm too fat or I'm flavour of the month. I don't feel either, but maybe I'm both, who knows?

I've belched a lot more since I had gall bladder surgery. I don't know why.

I don't have a good attention span and can't spend long in record stores or video shops or games emporiums without getting grumpy.

A few years back, when my style was 'punk grandma,' I picked up an amazing pair of sandals - orthopaedic ones, with really thick soles. I've given them away to a friend now, because these days my look is more '1980s substitute teacher gone wild.'

Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It's proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.

I think that for the five-year-old watching MTV right now, Lady Gaga is going to be an iconic person. In 20 years, the people who are here and talking to journalists will be like, 'Oh Lady Gaga changed my life, Nicki Minaj changed my life.' They'll be saying who influenced them and it will be Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, artists like that.

I'm passionate about color. My best friend and I sit and look at Pantone books for fun.

I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad.

Girls are taught to sing high and pretty, like Antony, not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we're slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we're not told growing up, and it's our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it.

My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character - I am that character... It's a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I've put them all to work onstage.

Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued; Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them?

My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn't stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn't have his blood.

For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She's a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the '80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways.

I mean, if I was living to please people, I'd have never been in a band at all. I wouldn't have anything awesome around. I'd just be bored.

Starting out really punk came from not knowing any better and listening to music like that, not knowing how to play music - well, still not knowing how to play music.