“I hate to do what I’m told, that’s why I’m not good at 9-to-5s.”

I knew that if I wanted to stop being a pushover I had to get comfortable with small rejections myself. That took some work, but because of it I can now say no to other people with a clear conscience.

Products are a must – full stop. I’m sorry to say it, but that bob won’t look so sleek on its own – you need a little help. It doesn’t have to be the high-end stuff that they sell in the salon. Products you find in the supermarket are just as good, and sometimes better.

I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn’t understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.

I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter – I just didn’t identify as a songwriter at all.

I was given baby doll toys myself, and they proved a stark reminder that my life was expected to revolve around childbearing – just as my mom’s had before me, and her mom’s had before her.

True love is about being able to accept raw emotions, no matter how difficult.

This is how I feel about everything that’s out of your control: once you make a record, it’s not yours anymore. There’s nothing you can do. It’s the way I feel about political movements – both of those things grow on their own.

I am tired of spending a little bit of money in a lot of pieces because they keep on falling apart.

My dad liked to boil a squirrel head and suck the brains out the nose. Smaller than a chicken, bigger than a rat.

I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself, and that is so important. And not just about your body, but so many ways of confidence. You’re constantly learning how to be confident, aren’t you?

When you get a certain amount of media attention, I think people are like, “Where’s your other album?”

I’ve belched a lot more since I had gall bladder surgery. I don’t know why.

I have a very good relationship with myself. My favourite quote is, “What you think about me is none of my business.”

We weren’t idiots, but I didn’t have that access to academic feminism. I had to realize, on my own, that feminism is not just about how far ahead you can get in a job and it isn’t about not wearing makeup. It isn’t about not watching your waistline. I had to recreate the world entirely.

A few years back, when my style was “punk grandma”, I picked up an amazing pair of sandals – orthopaedic ones, with really thick soles. I’ve given them away to a friend now, because these days my look is more “1980s substitute teacher gone wild.”

Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredible Christian background, and where there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.

Their parents were told: “You will never see them again.

I spend most of my life naked. In fact, I often have to be told by the people around me that it’s inappropriate to be as naked as I am.

I’ve been told I sold 110m albums and singles. If that’s the case, I should’ve come here in a space rocket.

She’s going, to be honest, Dad, most of my friends aren’t into Kiss. But they’ve all been told that it’s the greatest show on Earth.

Don’t Let Him Know is a rich, evocative and brilliantly told tale of family, of loyalties, and of love that must stay secret.

[What she told herself before interviews:] I am the way I am; I look the way I look; I am my age.

If I were to shot a film in France or elsewhere it would only be because the story that was being told was something that concerned me, and that really called me or needed to be shown on the screen.

A tale is told of a man in Paris during the upheaval in 1948, who saw a friend marching after a crowd toward the barricades.