I’ve got 50 different tunings in the guitar.
The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.
My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television.
I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue.
I’d had a rough childhood.
I’m a method actress in my songs, which is why it’s hard to sing them.
I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.
My parents told me I’d point to a bed of flowers and say ‘Pink. Pretty,’ before I knew any other words.
I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.
I certainly don’t want to be an angry old artist.
I assume there must be some kind of genetic thrust. My two grandmothers were very different, but both of them were frustrated musicians.
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 don’t like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.
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.
I’m not a pitiable creature. It’s just that I suffer very eloquently.
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.
Buddy Holly and the early rock ‘n’ roll was no lighter than the way I play. It’s very minimal.
I had made all these rules for myself: I’m not writing social commentary, I’m not writing love songs.
An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.
I learned from admiration and osmosis.