Discovering Her True Self-
"Ever since I can remember, I've been a musician first. I wasn't just an extension of the piano -- I was the piano. I came to realize that everything I needed was inside myself. It's like you don't think about how you drink water, you just do. It was the same way with music. I've been playing the piano ever since I was in diapers. It's never been an analytical thing."

 Recording Her New Album, Boys For Pele-

 "It felt like a new chapter. And part of the reason is that, for the first time in my life, there has been nobody standing over my shoulder saying, ‘Why don't you do it this way?' This gave me complete license to take the songs wherever I instinctively felt they should go. I knew that there were places where I'd never let myself go musically and lyrically in the past. This time around, I could push myself to explore those boundaries. With this album, I finally discovered what complete creative freedom feels like."

 Being From Venus and Men Being From....

 "Before I began writing Boys For Pele, I hit bottom with my male relationships. I mean, I could not put one more fishing line in one more boy's pond. And my songs have always been reflective of what is going on in my life at a particular time. And, if anything, this albums has been inspired by my relationships with men. A lot of changes have taken place in this period of time -- with lovers, collaborators and close friends. Some of those relationships reached a crossroads, a point beyond honor -- where I realized that I was stealing fire from men. That's what I needed to write about. But I had to be on my knees before I could be absolutly honest, before I could find my own fire.

 "These songs are not about make-ups or break-ups. And they're not concerned about who is sleeping with whom. They're about the realization that you and the person you're with are talking different lanuages. They're about recognizing than an extreme kind of viciousness is being played out even as you exchange honeysuckle. They're about things that go on in a woman's heart -- the things that are expressed and the things that have to remain hidden. They're about the breaking down of the patriarchy within relationships and the idea of women claiming their own power.

 "Each song became a fragment, a part of this woman that I really needed to get to know. Each song demaned what order it should be in. So the album became the story that it wanted to be. A mother does not dictate to her baby what it's gonna be -- baby dictates to the mother. This album came out of me kicking and screaming."

 The Future-

 "I don't know what is normal to you. That's one man staring at the moon. I'm getting to a place that's just endless, the possibilies, so I'm starting to push the limits more than I had before."