I think Madonna has a great deal of intelligence and capability. I have a lot of respect for her. She's taken her career and maximized it with intelligence and creativity.

In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious.

I only wanted to be a songwriter. I never wanted to be a singer. And I never wanted to be famous.

My one area of vulnerability was I didn't know how to have a healthy relationship with a man.

I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.

Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.

In theater, you get to rehearse several weeks, you memorize everything, and by the time you open, you know what the play is. In film, it's almost the opposite. You do your work on your own and maybe have a couple of minutes to rehearse. When the camera rolls, you generally don't know what's going to happen.

You're always in a box, and you're an escape artist if you do what I do - or if you're a creative person, period. You build your box, and then you escape from it. You build another one, and you escape from it. That's ongoing.