A rumor that followed me forever was that my family was in the mafia. For years I had to live with it. They'd call me the mafia princess so I rolled with it for the rest of high school. People even joke about it today.

I wanted the players to feel like they were part of a family to be conscious of that controlled togetherness as they made that slow entrance onto the field. It had a great psychological effect on the opposing team too. They'd never seen anything like it.

They basically said that if I didn't show up for school they'd mark me present they wouldn't send the truant officer after me. At 16 I enrolled in something called continuing education. Once a month I'd go out to Jamaica but I didn't take it seriously.

When I enrolled in college at age 19 I had a total of eight years of formal classroom education. As a result I was not comfortable with formal lectures and receiving regular homework assignments.

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

About half my designs are controlled fantasy 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.

For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural death is the obscene mystery the ultimate affront the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

I like to sing in the car with the windows rolled down and hair blowing all over my face.

I remember that all of a sudden the car felt like I couldn't control it. It was absolutely the most horrifying experience. We rolled over off the freeway. I think there was something wrong with the car.

A lot of the songs start with an image. I was sitting there playing the guitar and I pictured this old dirty green car with the window rolled down in the hot hot hot Texas heat and this beautiful woman I knew when I was a kid sitting behind the wheel looking out at me.