I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought.

All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don't know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how. But I couldn't responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I'm just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go.

Choices always were a problem for you. What you need is someone strong to guide you. Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow, what you need is someone strong to use you - like me.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

My life won't be a series of either/ors - musician or actor, rock or country, straitlaced or rebellious, this or that, yes or no. The real choices in life aren't that simple.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.