I'm one of the few that comes from this vantage point: I never tried to get a record deal.

I'd say it's been an interesting evening, wouldn't you?

"I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.

Fact is that the original source for a lot of the bluegrass music me and my father used to listen to was minstrel coon songs.

They sign a bunch of women, and they call it a movement. I don't like the way women in music have been identified as women first and musicians second.

For me the rallying cry has become: Subvert! Subvert! Use the media against itself; use the industry against itself.

I was raped. That kind of burned me out on the whole romantic expatriate notion.

No one's ever been able to define blues. To me, blues is three chords and something to say. There's a real temptation to think that blues is singing about misery and sorrow. It's singing about your experiences, and what I find in blues is the message of hope and inspiration, because you may be singing about your misery, but the fact that you're singing, that's the real message.

MORE QUOTES

If I could actually survive in a foreign country with no money, taking care of myself, I couldn't be crazy.

I think the word soul has gotta come into it. Music that's created just for consuming lacks that soul, that swing, that feeling.

My music has a lot of humor but I keep getting compared to humorless women.

They gave me a shot of Thorazine, a real fascist drug. Your neck's going like this [she flaps her head in an ugly untogether fashion] and if youdidn't think you were crazy before, you'll think you're crazy then. It's what you call a mental straitjacket - much more liberal than a straitjacket you can see.

There's no air that smells sweeter or more mysterious than East Texas air.

I had nothing to do with that album. I had nothing to do with the material selected, with the artwork on the cover, the imagery. I couldn't even control the way that I was being presented to the media, as yet another in a long line of American curiosities, like a souvenir from some guy's trip to America .

Punk is just as much a form of folk music as anything is!

I used to hitch-hike around Europe with only one cassette. On one side was 'Doc and Merle Pickin' the Blues," and on the other was Pink Floyd. I called it 'Doc Side of the Moon.'

I've achieved the impossible, you know? When David stood up to Goliath and had his sling in his hand and his punk-rock attitude, I'm sure he felt the way I feel now.

I thought, this looks like a fucking butcher's shop. I am not gonna take this sitting down. So they come to get me and I start screamin', and some cop is just beggin' me to kick him in the balls. So I do.

You can't always find politics with your intellect, because you get tricked by propaganda or dogma. But you can feel the difference between a politic that swings, that is about involvement.

Squatting was the first opportunity I had to break out of the cycle of homelessness that, for young women especially, makes your self esteem deteriorate."

I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world.

Music is not a commodity, it's a resource.

The real goal I'm working toward is to do something to help integrate the African and European influences of American music. I think at one time inthe history of popular music they were coming together naturally. The record companies have created a false sense of segregation. It may seem impossible to tear down, but it's something I'm looking forward to as a life's work.

People might say I'm difficult, but did you ever hear anyone describe a label as 'difficult'? By nature, artists should challenge. When they call you difficult, it is a reflection of the imbalance of power.

Not only has this whole mess been beneficial, but it's been a blessing. Before this, my ambitions were never so great that I would have taken on a multinational corporation and come out feeling so confident and strong.

Some women can be sweet because they don't know how else to move through the world. I'm sweet because I can afford to be.

They did that big, lumbering dinosaur thing, acting with impunity. Fortunately, it was over an artistic principle. I don't think I could have sustained the fight if it was just over more money or more contractual rights.

There was no place whatsoever for a woman in the life and the world that Jack Kerouac described. And women were not going to be invited into it. So it's sort of like crashing the party. I know I'm here unwelcome and I'm going to rewrite this history so I can be a part of it.