“A heart that hurts is a heart that works.”

“All I'm trying to do is to keep going and keep evolving.”

“Although I'm a huge fan of Ben Kweller, I don't think I'd cover one of his songs, simply because there's just so much of my own stuff I wanna do.”

“As long as there are religions, there are going to be people who are hiding their rottenness behind the veil of religion.”

“At heart I am a librarian, a bird-watcher, a transcendentalist, a gardener, a spinster, a monk.”

“Baseball is more than a game. It's like life played out on a field.”

“David Ortiz is a genius. He's incredible to watch. Over and over, he hits home runs that are simply transcendent.”

“Doing interviews can sometimes mess up my head. It makes me feel dirty. It's frustrating how the press recycles a quote to death.”

“Every song brings back memories, like I remember where I wrote all these songs. 'Universal Heartbeat' was my apartment in New York City. 'My Sister' was at my apartment in Boston. I remember places and I remember what I was thinking when I wrote it.”

“Everything's been a struggle for me.”

“For a long time, music was hope. Now it seems music isn't enough to make me happy. It used to be that's all I needed to keep going. Now I need other things to take up the other parts of my life.”

“From the beginning, I've always had a knack for catchy melodies. But I went through a period when I was trying to be rock n' roll and have a rock n' roll attitude. I was fighting my nature by trying to play really hard and sing really hard. But at a certain point, I realized that I loved syrupy pop music with tons of harmony.”

“Harmonies come really naturally to me. I don't have to labor too hard over them. I'll sing a lead vocal, and then I will immediately have all of these other ideas for vocal harmonies. I think that some of the most fun parts of recording, for me, are the vocal harmonies.”

“Human relations, I mess them up, and they let me down.”

“I always believe that a person can learn so much by just jumping into something and trying to do it rather than having someone else teach you everything.”

“I am not dead inside. I still care about right and wrong.”

“I can't believe I got a major-label record deal. My music was quirky, and my voice was so odd and high and girlish, it was like a weird novelty act.”

“I could make a whole album with no one else involved at all. It would be a total, unadulterated expression of myself. Because whenever you have others playing on a project, their influence becomes a part of it.”

“I don't believe songs that try to say everything in a simple slogan.”

“I don't buy a lot when I travel, but when I do, I like to send gifts from wherever I am. It's fun to find the local post office.”

“I don't feel bad or scared about getting older in terms of my looks or anything like that. I'm not afraid of my face changing. I enjoy seeing my face change. I think it's really interesting. I wouldn't want to have same face for my whole life. It would be boring to look at the same face in the mirror for 80 years.”

“I don't have anything to prove anymore. I don't have a record deal, no one has any expectations, I'm in a position of freedom. I don't need anyone's approval.”

“I don't really care about money. I find money boring and accounting boring, so I'm probably not going to ever make a lot of money.”

“I don't think I'm romantic at all. I have a lot of faith in the right thing happening. I don't really hope for a lot of particulars, I just have faith that the right thing will happen most of the time.”

“I feel some kind of duty to be really, really honest as a writer. The same is true of my songwriting.”

“I find myself a fascinating subject.”

“I finished 'Beautiful Creature,' and I felt somewhat unfulfilled. I felt like this other side of me needed to be released. Some of the songs I left off the album weren't intense enough to be what I wanted. They weren't hard enough.”

“I get a little sick of myself as a solo artist. I get a little bit bored.”

“I have been a bridesmaid. Fortunately, the outfits were pretty tame. They were cream and black, but I still wouldn't wear them out in public, though.”

“I have many moods, and there is no objective reality. And I kind of live by that.”

“I like people wanting to know about me.”

“I like visiting LA, but I wouldn't want to live there.”

“I love 'Crazy Horse,' and Neil Young is one of my favorite guitar players.”

“I love playing in front of people. I feel powerful, 'cause I don't have to really say anything - I'm just singing.”

“I make music and I can't stop. It's a compulsion and an obsession and a curse.”

“I never felt happy with the idea that part of what I do is to be an object to be looked at. I thought of my public persona as an entity separate to myself.”

“I never really expected to win the hearts of the masses.”

“I still have a lot of those depressive thoughts, but now I have the foresight to tell myself, 'Don't think like that,' and things seem better.”

“I still have all the faith and love for my music and yet I'm still playing places for kids.”

“I tend to fall for the archetypal, talented, charismatic rock boy.”

“I think everyone's pretty much the same underneath. The collective unconscious is a real thing. There's only a few emotions, and we all have them. There's, like, seven emotions. So personal is universal. Everyone experiences confusion, joy and pain, just in different forms.”

“I used to be an over-packer! It took me a while to be smart about what I brought with me. I used to tour with a huge bag full of clothes and another one full of shoes because I wanted to have choices. And I ended up wearing the same pair of shoes all the time!”

“I want to paint. That is probably going to sound so pretentious coming from someone who's been a musician.”

“I was just dying to get out of my twenties.”

“I'd just like to inspire people to be themselves and do what they want and not conform to the rigid guidelines of the music or entertainment business.”

“If you do things when you're burned out, it'll make you bitter.”

“If you want to achieve things in life, you've just got to do them, and if you're talented and smart, you'll succeed.”

“I'm a damaged person, but I have hope and a will to not give up.”

“I'm a neo-Luddite.”

“I'm able to see humor in a lot of things.”

“I'm full of contradictions.”

“I'm just trying to get rid of all the mystery surrounding me and let people see what I'm thinking. So they can understand me and stop assuming things about me.”

“I'm kind of an emotional exhibitionist.”

“I'm not a very good advice-giver.”

“I'm pretty good with languages. I know a bit of French and actually want to live in France some day so that I can get fluent. I think it'd be tragic to go through life only knowing one language.”

“I'm really conflicted about my role as a front-person. I hate the attention.”

“I'm totally committed to the cause of individuality. That's the only thing I stand by: independence.”

“In this world, where everything happens so fast, it's hard to sit back, take the time and contemplate.”

“It costs a lot of money to make an album in a studio in New York with a producer and musicians. I have to pay a publicist every month. I have to pay for mastering, production, the manufacturing of the discs. Then, to promote an album properly, you have to spend a lot of money.”

“It makes me feel good to have some comforting effect on someone that needs comfort.”

“It may seem strange, but the most grateful I've ever felt was when I was held up at gunpoint. After I handed over my wallet and the mugger ran off into the woods, I thought, 'Thank you for not shooting me.' I was overwhelmingly glad to be alive and unharmed.”

“I've always been a loner, and I've spent most of my life as a single person.”

“I've been embarrassing myself publicly for over 20 years. Why should I stop now?”

“I've finally learned to love my voice for its uniqueness.”

“I've seen quite a bit of the world, but I really like Sweden and feel like I could live there some day.”

“Just do what feels right.”

“Keanu Reeves is, like, the worst actor I've ever seen. I can't believe he's a movie star.”

“Motivation is just this potion to create stuff, a compulsion to express the truth of my own experiences in this life.”

“My dad claims that he was able to trace us back to the West Virginia Hatfields. When I look at the old pictures, the patriarchs have kind of a physical likeness to some of the men on the father's side of my family. I want it to be true.”

“My dad was depressed a lot of the time, and there were a lot of things in his life that he never resolved.”

“My first guitar was a Gibson Challenger.”

“My growth as an artist and a person has been so slow and gradual, it's hard to make a story out of it.”

“My guitar playing has not developed as much as I think it could because I never practice. I only play when I'm writing or recording or when I'm playing on tour. When I'm sitting around at home, I never play.”

“My knees are ticklish.”

“My music - that's the one area I won't let myself be pushed around. But in other parts of my life, I'm a confused mess.”

“My songs are about not knowing who to be and not knowing how to act.”

“My soul is fine, thanks.”

“My whole life was writing, recording and touring over and over again. At some point I realised I wasn't enjoying myself any more.”

“Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it.”

“People are complex. I'm just showing my complexity.”

“People don't analyze Britney Spears' lyrics 'cause they're so obvious, you know? And her image is so kind of blah and mainstream that who really wants to read between the lines, because it's all so out there in front of you and boring and white bread.”

“People make such a big deal about how people in bands look, especially if you're a girl.”

“People need meanings to everything. People want you to intellectualize every choice you make.”

“Puerto Ricans who find they can no longer afford to keep their pets often choose to drop their dogs, sometimes even whole litters of puppies, at a beach - sometimes under cover of night, in secret - rather than surrender the animal to a city or state-run shelter where the animals will face grim conditions and almost certain death by euthanasia.”

“Puerto Rico has a stray dog problem. Tens of thousands of homeless canines - hundreds of thousands, by some estimates - live and die on the streets and beaches all over this Caribbean island of almost four million people.”

“Some of the songs are so crazy, the words are so crazy... it's hard to believe I was so crazy.”

“Sometimes I feel like a human pin cushion. Every painful emotion hits me with ridiculously exaggerated force. And the anxiety feels like hands inside of me, squeezing my guts really hard.”

“Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.”

“Songwriting is like going to church. I'm connecting to something, and it's rewarding in really important ways. I don't need to share it with anyone to feel good about it.”

“The first kiss between two people is something really good in life.”

“The most rabidly religious people are the most rabidly evil.”

“The way I see it, all the popular singers are strippers.”

“The whole thing about rock music, pop music, is it's really for kids.”

“To make big steps, you've got to take action yourself and not listen to other people.”

“To me, success was not having to have a boss and not having a day job. I've been living my own version of success since the early '90s when I first got signed. I haven't had a job since then.”

“What does it mean to a person whose identity is very wrapped up in the music she makes, if her worth is measured by how many records she sells?”

“What happens when your dream comes true - when the spotlight is on and then it moves away?”

“When I did have a little bit of commercial success, it really didn't suit my temperament at all. I'm a terrible public person.”

“When I first started making music, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn't have a concept. I didn't think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness.”

“When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.”

“Writing helps me process things that are happening to me.”

“You can learn so much just by doing, not by listening to anybody.”

“You find yourself approaching middle age, playing another scuzzy rock club.”

“You think you know who you are, and then other people have these other ideas.”