You can’t change the past so don’t let it haunt you. You can change the future but first you’ve got to want to.
Everything changes all the time, and unfortunately, everyone who knows what you do by buying records only hears a small amount of what’s going on in your life.
Everything must change, everything must move forward.
First of all, I’m pretty private about my personal life.
I like Lady Gaga because I like that she pushes the envelope.
Love is a battlefield.
You shouldn’t have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.
You don’t want to trash what you’ve done; that’s your history.
People’s lives change dramatically over such a long time period, and I think that if you’re still vital, and you’re still interested in writing and things like that, of course your music evolves and reflects where you are in your life.
I have different reasons for the way that I react to things now that I have kids. It’s not about me, it’s about my children going out into this world that makes me say, “What the hell are you all doing?” I have to put them out there, and then I have to worry.
I never looked at people or singing as commodities.
If you’re retired, it’s a blessing. You know, if you want to keep working and doing what you want to do, it’s not a blessing as all – it’s a curse.
The great times were never as great as they seem in the rearview mirror.
At fifty. I thought I would be done. I thought I’d be finished by now. So I have no idea. I just leave it.
I spent most of my adult life as someone’s mother and the rest of my life trying to make sure that children are safe. So this to me is – we wrote Hell Is For Children in 1979.
I can’t stand what people do to each other. I think we’re brilliant as a species. I think we are amazing. I think that God is incredible, that He just gave us everything. Everything in our face. Everything for us to use. And sometimes we’re such shitheads. And it makes me crazy.
I play ten, twelve weeks out of the year, five times a week, and I really still love to do it. But that’s not what I’m interested in doing now. Even though I love it.
I love “Heartbreaker.” “Heartbreaker” stands up for me still. It still works to me. The sentiment is still timely and it just works. But I don’t want to do that again. I’m not interested in re-creating that. That was great and I’ll just leave it there.
Once I had kids, my whole attitude changed. I was like, “You make a spinal cord from scratch and we’ll talk.”
I wasn’t interested in fabricating things and altering what I did to make hit records.
Of course, you’re not making records in a vacuum. I’m not making them for myself. It would be nice if I could get more people to hear them. But if I have to sell my soul to the devil to do it, I won’t.