“You have to live life in the moment and get the most out of it.”

I don’t know why it is that we need to denigrate, to knock down. It’s so sick.

When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the neighborhood girls would sit on the stoop and sing. I was known as the kid who had a good voice and no father.

I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

I’d started going to acting classes at 14, played ‘Medea’ at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.

My mother never really thought I could become anything.

In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It’s not so competitive.

Being a woman in music was fine, but when I wanted to direct, I was poking my head into a man’s world.

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: “I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can’t. It’s the best film I’ve seen since Citizen Kane”.

I am a nice person. I care about my driver having lunch, you know.

I’ll see a celadon green room in an 18th century New Hampshire house and just fall in love. Colors stay in my head.

I only began to sing because I couldn’t get a job as an actress.

I never sing in the shower either.

Doubt can motivate you, so don’t be afraid of it. Confidence and doubt are at two ends of the scale, and you need both. They balance each other out.

A man who graduated high in his class at Yale Law School and made partnership in a top law firm would be celebrated. But a woman who accomplishes this is treated with suspicion.

The audience is the barometer of the truth.

When I sing, people shut up.