Musician

I grew up in a very masculine environment. So I was around a lot of men, my brothers and their friends. There was just a lot of guys around.

It's a joke to think that anyone is one thing. We're all such complex creatures. But if I'm going to be a poster child for anything, anger's a gorgeous emotion. It gets a bad rap, but it can make great changes happen.

The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

Knowing that people make my songs their own is what keeps me going.

I found that the more truthful and vulnerable I was, the more empowering it was for me.

Down the road, I'll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.

I was 9 when I wrote 'Fate Stay with Me.' It was this fictional song about romance gone wrong.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that's going on.

I'll be writing songs till I die. There's just no question.

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s.

My favourite pastime used to be sitting on a park bench watching people. But after 'Jagged Little Pill,' the eyeballs turned, and I was the watched one.

I'm quite obsessed with the idea of nailing the girl friendship. It's such an art, so delicate.

When someone says that I'm angry it's actually a compliment. I have not always been direct with my anger in my relationships, which is part of why I'd write about it in my songs because I had such fear around expressing anger as a woman.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

I'd rather talk to people about their personal spiritual practices or what they believe love is. I'm born to do that. Could I enter into the political realm and dive into that? Sure, but I don't think I would want to do that.

But I love to entertain. My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly.

Anger has been a really big deal for women: how can we express it without feeling that, as the physically weaker sex, we won't get killed. The alpha-woman was burned at the stake and had her head chopped off in days of old.

I live with some of my best friends from high school, very commune-like, in my house. It's my hippie way of life.

Unless I really loved it and felt really passionate about it, I would just kind of abort the song and start a new one.