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.
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.
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.