We, the artists, make the stuff they sell and they're like ticks on our backs, sucking the life out of us.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

They consistently hobble artists' in the name of selling more units then are surprised when the fans don't buy the lukewarm music this produces. So they then drop the artist.

I feel a lot more comfortable being me these days. I'm constantly told that my work is good. A lot of fans and a lot of other artists say my songs and albums mean a lot to them. Isn't that what's important?

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

I grew up with all kinds ofmusic, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

I like working closely with artists. I think that's very important in fantasy and science fiction - the visual aspect of the worlds and the characters.

For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and had to work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, as artists, we just block it out. So really, the pressure comes from us. That's how the first movie happened. There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit the audience hard.

I always make this joke that I know you were expecting to see the big skirts and the hoops. But that was a long time ago. Artists aren't always seen as real people. If you start out as a teenager, sometimes people want to keep you locked as that. But I'm a woman now.

Back in the 60s, San Francisco artists lived in communes.

Things have changed a great deal since the days of Mr. Mayer. The studios no longer control, as they did in those days, artists or directors or producers, as the case may be.

Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, and a lot of American artists were my greatest influences.

I don't think artists are made, I think they're born.

But some great records are are being made with today's technology and there are still great artists among us. Likewise there are artists today who are so reliant on modern technology, they wouldn't have emerged when recording was more organic.