It's in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie's birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That's why I like Charlie Parker.
— Joni Mitchell
Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.
My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.
My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold.
I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world.
I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.
I'm a little young for retirement.
I see bodies as individual things.
I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords.
I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is.
When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.
I'm a Buddhist.
When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.
I see music as fluid architecture.
Drag wasn't always counterculture.
People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal.
I do have this reputation for being a serious person.
I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.
But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability.
Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.
In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles.
Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.
I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.
The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.
I believe that I am male and I am female.
I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.
When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it.
America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill.
Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.
For the first time in my career, I'm working in a fine-arts arena, so I'm finally getting some intelligent reviews.
I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.
What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
I love to dance.
If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.
I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.
I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.
My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words.
I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.
I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.
I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.
In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.
Van Gogh was impulsive.
Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.
To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.
The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.
Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.
I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.
You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.
I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.
I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.
