Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are more and more of us women out there who won't be pushed around and will give back a lot more than was bargained for. You have to mean it, though.
My favourite guitar was - I can't remember if it was '50s or '60s - a pale wood Telecaster, and it made me a better player. It was beautiful, so easy to play.
I get the same lurching thrill now when I'm about to sit down to an egg mayonnaise sandwich and a packet of plain crisps as I used to get when I fancied someone.
Women are constantly taught to think about what other people are thinking, from those 'Jackie' magazine quizzes - 'What's he thinking?' - to being a grown adult.
I think, often, people who do something new creatively don't benefit financially from it - it's the people who come after and make them palatable that make money.
It's all very well for the Kinks and Damon Albarn to sing those songs and sneer at Mr. Nine to Five, but again, they're white men, so they didn't have it very hard.
There was an angry wave in the '70s, a strong feminist angry wave. I remember thinking - oh my God - I thought it was the beginning of something, and it all went quiet.
I copied John Lennon; I copied a bit of David Bowie. It's such a shame, and I'm so glad that now young girls have so many different role models in all different walks of life.
I want to say to younger women especially that it's OK to be an outsider. It's OK to admit to your rage. You're not the only person walking down the street feeling angry inside.
I never thought of myself as a strong person until I wrote my first book, and people started to say, 'You're a survivor. You're such a strong person.' It never ever occurred to me.
When you've fought and fought to keep positive and to keep creative even though there was not a space to be creative, well, you show me any human who is not angry after 60 years of that.
If I didn't live in London, I would live in Glasgow. I love the colour of the brick and the black ironwork. I think it's got such atmosphere and is extraordinary. I met great people there.
I have a daughter. I have my imagination. I have friends. I, in no way, am going to louse that up with some idiot man, frankly. They drag you down - I'm talking about my generation of men.
If my 18-year-old daughter asked me whether she should lead a truth-hunting, artistic, uncompromising life as I have done, I'd say no, don't do it. It's a difficult and lonely path for a woman.
I've burned all my bridges for the sake of getting as near as I can to the truth. And after years of searching for the truth, you find that that's all you can bear. The truth and nothing but the truth.
With the second book, I didn't have an ideal reader in mind, as it developed quite out of my control, this detective novel of why am I so full of anger, why did I pick up a guitar when I was poor and uneducated.
Most female artists - to do what you have to do and to be as honest as you have to be, to be as selfish as you have to be, as tunnel-visioned as you have to be to make art, not entertainment - you can't compromise, really.
I haven't found music comforting since the '80s, but it doesn't mean it's not good - it just doesn't work for me. It's shocking to me because music was my religion from the age of 11, and it's like I don't believe in my god any more.
I'm still angry at so much - class, gender, society, the way we are constantly mentally coerced into behaving a certain way without us even knowing it. I feel so oppressed by the weight of it all that I just want to blow a hole in it all.
I think young men and boys are taught to fail. It's nothing to them; they do sport, they fall over, they shout, 'I'm all right,' and carry on. But with girls, they're so appallingly embarrassed to fail, it's like it's considered unfeminine.
In the 1970s, girls didn't do anything. It wasn't their fault. For me and the other working-class girls I hung around with, our route was plotted - you were a secretary and a wife. I wanted to hitchhike around the world, go on motorbikes, be in bands.
I think sometimes men find it easier to be a carer than an accessory. I mean, most women I know in bands are pretty lonely. Guys don't want to travel around with you. I know loads of women who do it, but guys don't do it. They're not brought up for it.
The older I get, the more the lying, the losing touch with your true thoughts and feelings, and the compromises required to fit in seem not worth the effort. It's my one go on Earth; why spend any more of it conforming to other people's rules and ideals?
My mother was so ignorant of what could have befallen me and was probably so exhausted - she was one of the first generation of single parents as well - that it was all a bit overwhelming. So the naivety of parents meant we did have a certain amount of freedom.
I was brought up to be uncompromisingly bloody-minded by my mother. She equipped me, without knowing it, to be someone who is creative rather than an entertainer. Not many girls are brought up like that, to never rely on a man. To not be a housewife, not be a mother.
I usually write at my kitchen table, nothing exotic. I don't need any equipment. I don't have to organise anyone else to rehearse, and when I do a reading, lots of women and girls come, whereas gigs are dominated by men. Not against men, but I want to communicate to women.
We were very deliberately not playing 12-bar structures, blues structures, which rock musicians turned into such a cliche. We tried to... listen to the rhythms within ourselves and take the normal words we used every day in our normal thoughts, which girls hadn't written about before.
I definitely thought the first book was going to be a one-off. I never thought I'd even write a book, not ever having aspired to be a writer. It's something that never occurred to me - a bit like it never occurred to me to play guitar when I was young. I just thought it was out of my league.
During my childhood and teenage years, everything I knew was at war. My mother and father were at war. My sister and I were at war. I was at war with my atypical nature, desperately trying to fit in and be normal. Even my genes were at war - the cool Swiss-German side versus the hot-headed Corsican.
We used to have massively long discussions about how we should stand on stage. Should we stand with our legs apart? No, all the guys with guitars in skinny jeans stand with their legs apart, and you'd think, 'We can't stand like that.' We'd spend hours and hours, days and days, discussing how to stand.
I read a lot when I was young. All the obvious, all the greats, from 'Le Grand Meaulnes,' 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'Fear and Loathing,' 'Catcher in the Rye,' 'The Bell Jar,' 'The Female Eunuch,' 'Valley of the Dolls,' 'The Feminine Mystique,' Tom Wolfe. Then, film took over for me. Film was so exciting in the '70s.
I feel sorry for girls getting caught up in it and still thinking they have to define themselves and their success by being in a relationship, straight women, straight girls, by being in a heterosexual relationship or being in any relationship, as if that's in any way a mark of what kind of successful human being you are.
Female rage is not often acknowledged - never mind written about - so one of the questions I'm asking is, 'Are you allowed to be this angry as you grow older as a woman?' But I'm also trying to trace where my anger came from. Who made me the person that is still so raw and angry? I think that it's empowering to ask that question.