I tried to take seriously the idea that if you tortured language you might arrive at some new truth. Later it became clear to me that I was retreading ground by fighting the literary battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that I was actually a bit bored by some of the books I professed to love.

With my songs I tried to prove that there is love.

I fell in love with the public, the public fell in love with me, and I tried to keep it that way.

I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to go, and I'm not going to worry about how things connect until later on.'

That's the Elektra I tried to portray: one that's always in the grey. She is a tortured soul.

I think it's important for all culturally literate people to understand the technological substrate of new developments.