“I got to play Kim in Bye Bye Birdie, Sandy in Grease, and Maria in The Sound of Music. And it was so much fun for me, but the thing that I looked forward to the most was at the cast parties. After the shows they had karaoke machines set up and that's when I could sing country music.”

“The only thing that could soothe and calm me during this era was music. That's continued to be true throughout my life. My mother would put my sister and me to bed and turn on the radio to sing us to sleep. There was something very comforting about being in a dark, cold room with Prince, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, or Madonna playing quietly. I didn't have to think about anything - the music took me away from myself and I got lost in it. I needed it like a drug. I felt disconnected and alone, and I realized around this time that things would never get better. It got so bad that I would pretend to be sick at school just so I could come home and lie in bed listening to music. It was like being adrift on the ocean at night. I still have trouble falling asleep without music now.”

“The music defied classification. If I had been writing areview of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,guitar-driven rock ’n’ roll. But the guitars made sounds guitarsdidn’t always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.The music dug in so deep you didn’t hear it so much as feelit, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jumpinto the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.That’s the only way I could describe the music.It was the sonic equivalent of flight.”

“When I was 9 or 10, I used to get all the lead roles because I was the tallest person. But my interest in music soon drew me to country music. I was infatuated with the sound, with the storytelling. I could relate to it. I can't really tell you why. With me, it was just instinctual.”

“A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.”

“But from within the carton, Morty's American flag - which I know is folded there, at the very bottom, in the official way - tells me, "It's against some Jewish law," and so, on into the car he went with the carton, and then he drove it down to the beach, to the boardwalk, which was no longer there. The boardwalk was gone. Good-bye, boardwalk. The ocean had finally carried it away. The Atlantic is a powerful ocean. Death is a terrible thing. That's a doctor I never heard of. Remarkable. Yes, that's the word for it. It was all remarkable. Good-bye, remarkable. Egypt and Greece good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!”