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" There's only so many small shows you can do. A lot of the smaller things are more side project things. Not everything is appropriate for Sonic Youth to do. "

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" Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries because they've always been second-class citizens, kinda having had to claw their way up. I mean, who made up all the rules in the culture? Men - white male corporate society. So why wouldn't a woman want to rebel against that? "

" I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it. "

" I don't really feel comfortable anywhere except when I'm working alone at home. It's exhausting to be out around people. "

" I am basically a shy person, so performing sometimes helps me focus - having all those people concentrate their attention on you. I don't see it so much as becoming another person onstage; it's more exploring a different side of your personality. "

" I don't even know if I always entirely get what I'm trying to say right away with lyrics. I like a lot of things that are more subtext. I grew up mishearing lyrics my whole life, but somehow there's so much more, too, that's implied in vocal delivery and the music itself and the gestural quality of it. "

" I've done art on my own, and I've also collaborated with other people to make art. And collaborating with other people is always interesting because you end up doing things you probably wouldn't do otherwise. "

" In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it. "

" I was kind of freaked out by the art world in the 1980s. Just the money thing. All the competition over artists. "

" I like that show 'Ray Donovan' - I'm obsessed with that. He's in Hollywood, he's some kind of a fixer, but he's also kind of a thug. And 'Scandal,' the D.C. one with Kerry Washington. "

" I never felt like I had anything really figured out. When I was a teenager, it was all about teenagers having an 'identity crisis.' That was the phrase that was used. But in my early 20s, I was still like, 'When am I going to be over that?' "

" Rap music is really good when you're traumatized. "

" I was very aware of performers who have a persona, whether it's Siouxsie Sioux or Patti Smith or Lydia Lunch, and I'm just this middle-class girl coming from a more conventional upbringing, this California person. But in a way I felt like it's important to represent the normal. "

" I just happened to start playing music for the conceptual ideas. "

" I feel most free onstage. The audience, it's an abstraction. You don't really see anyone out there, but you feel the audience inside you. "

" And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice. "

" It's hard to say when the life of a band starts and stops... but playing music together is an act of trust. When that's broken, it's impossible to continue. "

" Anyone becomes mannered if you think too much about what other people think. "

" I like the adrenaline of playing improv - it makes me feel really calm. "

" Because our daughters have school and it's just such a hassle going down to New York all the time, we can really only go on the weekends, we kind of... Steve came up here and worked out stuff for the second half of the record. "

" I have a really hard time writing my own lyrics for this record, because one, I had to write so many and also I was kind of perplexed by the idea of how I was going to sing and play... because at that time, we hadn't really thought about asking someone else. "

" Sonic Youth, for better or worse, is/was a machine that carried me along through pregnancy, motherhood, and creative opportunities I never would have achieved on my own. I'm grateful and surprised that we were listened to, loved, ignored, and overrated. "

" Unless you're singing something that's kind of in rhythm with the bass, the melodies, it's just difficult. "

" I see it as more of a teenage activity than, you know, she's only 11, but you know, I think it's great that she knows so many girls who want to play music. And I see it more as a teen activity than I do as going into music. "

" Basketball and ping-pong are my two forms of exercise. "

" In rock music, people have certain assumptions that it makes people more enlightened, and it really doesn't. "

" It's amazing how many things you can do when you're just pretending. "

" I'm a slow learner. When people are so talented or facile at picking up an instrument and playing covers, like Yo La Tengo, I admire that. But I could never do that. "

" The last two records I liked playing a lot. "

" No one talks about woman power. The Spice Girls - they're masquerading as little girls. It's repulsive. "

" I love the way Lady Gaga finds humour in fashion, but it's still very stylised. "