What girls do to each other is beyond description. No chinese torture comes close.

I was two and a half when I first climbed up and sat at a piano.

When the mothers start to shatter, then everything just comes undone.

After a while, though, you realize that a whole slew of young singer-songwriter piano players are getting compared to you. That's when you feel the passage of time is occurring.

My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.

I'm not not going to stop giving away what I feel about something.

People listen to music the way they want to listen to music.

I think everyone understands grief, the journey it takes us on, whether it's the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a disappointment. Some people don't deal with it, the power of it. Some do. Some feel the weight of it and it informs their choices. I've had to open up to grief in different contexts.

I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.

There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world.

You have to be clear what your message is and what you're doing. I mean, Miley Cyrus is an amazing talent, and sometimes you kind of just want to say, 'We know you're not Hannah Montana anymore. We know that, my dear. My darling. Now, go be great.'

Sometimes it seems like we're closer to our manicurists than we are our own souls. We have to find ways to get in touch with that and to listen to it and to hear it.

There is a time and a place for things. Sometimes one needs to put a filter on oneself. That can be a good thing.

I am the worst influence. If you can't handle your vices, then I am the Devil.

Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.

I had a very strict upbringing with my dad and was very close to my mum, who was extremely loving.

Right now, half the world is depressed and they need to be entertained.

I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom's family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car - it was the late sixties - and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.

So the first job that I got - my father got it for me - he had his clerical collar on, was a gay bar in D.C., it was Mr. Henry's of Georgetown.

Not everybody wants to have the same career. I think what's difficult is when you have two people that do something very, very similar and they both, say, want the limelight. That's very tricky.

Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.

I'm a mother, and that's really important. Today, the mother and the musician can sit next to each other. Even when the musician is out there in full swing, the mother doesn't get switched off.

When one doesn't want the limelight, but is also creative in developing whatever it is they are, then you can have two equal people that aren't competing against each other. I think when you are in the same field, it's difficult to leave it outside and not compete. Then when the doors are closed; that pervades everything.

I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. We're both Leos, we understand each other.

I know people sometimes have this fantasy about Cornwall. But the Cornish are so grounded.