I never made any money from my music. I don't make that much; I make it flip-flopping between five and ten different disciplines.

I never became primarily a musician! I've always been a wanderer and I'm always bored.

Not that I have anything against music now, but I just hated being an anything. I don't know why.

People never heard bells in Western music sounding really cataclysmic. You hear that more in Russian music or in Asian, Indonesian traditions.

I'm not afraid to be a Russian Jewish romantic in my approach to anything, even in my animal divinities, or anything about the feeling.

I actually started as a singer in Brooklyn, and I lived in a community. To get out of the ghetto of my community, I was a musician.

My music education was oral. I was resistant to scores and things like that. In Jewish religious music, there are no scores. You learn everything by rote, by ear, by repeating.

I never wanted to have a profession, and I've succeeded in not having one, or if I did have one it never paid, or it's never been especially long-term.

There are some people who love being a something, but I also got the gist in the 60's when I grew up that you could be, in the art scene, very diverse.

I hung around hippie-ish kind of people and, first of all, they never made any money. If you never make any money, you never have to declare any profession!

There are pieces that in the history of music that also make me cry. I'm not ashamed to cry.

At this point I'm sure he's more plastic than person, but most people who hate wrinkles become Daleks over time, anyway.

This is what labels do. They stick. If people think you're MAD, then everything you do, everything you think, will have MAD stamped across it.

Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.

If we become aware of its limitations and compulsions, we can transcend them.

We're always hardest on our own work, I guess.

I work hard because I love my work.

I came from a family where my people didn't like rhythm and blues. Bing Crosby - "Pennies from Heaven" - Ella Fitzgerald, was all I heard.

I am not a consensus politician. Im a conviction politician.

Being a powerful woman who also exhibits great warmth is an incredible feat because people think that to be powerful you have to be cold, and you don't.

We all have our own karma and so different teachers will be meaningful to different students.