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" My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words. "

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" The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. "

" I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead. "

" I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them. "

" I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is. "

" I conceived in art college at the age of 20, near the end of term. "

" Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block. "

" I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it. "

" You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n' roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn't roll. He has got no swing in him. "

" I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar. "

" You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining. "

" I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions? "

" My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable. "

" At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar. "

" I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out. "

" I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy. "

" Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at. "

" I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords. "

" In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time. "

" I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is. "

" I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers. "

" 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. "

" I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic. "

" I do have this reputation for being a serious person. "

" The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy. "

" An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child. "

" If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well. "

" I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance. "

" My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. "

" Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep. "

" I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist. "