A lot of people don't understand what feminism is. They think it is about advance and success for women, but it's not that at all. It is about power for the female left. And they have this, I think, ridiculous idea that American women are oppressed by the patriarchy and we need laws and government to solve our problems for us.
I would not want to be called a feminist. The feminists don't believe in success for women and, of course, I believe that American women are the most fortunate people who ever lived on the face of the earth, can do anything they make up their minds to do.
People identify with me - everyone does - African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I'm ethnic.
What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by those breakthroughs did not enter the professions.
I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are.
It was a melting pot in Las Vegas. You got every age level, every ethnic background, every social aura - it was an absolute Americana audience... people who were there to celebrate occasions; people who were there to gamble; people who were there because they were awed by the whole Vegas operation. Tourists.
First I was a European-style player, then I was a downtown 'noise guy,' and now some people call me an Americana guy.
Americana Music is about all sorts of different music. It's very free and open: a world where people just like authentic music.
If you write your own lyrics now, and those are the main focus in the EP... people tend to approach it as Americana, which is wild. Thatβs what leads people to it. But itβs just whatever people want; as long as they like the music.
Living here in North America - I have been Americanized. When I go back home now, there are things that I have far less tolerance for in South Africa. We've come such a long way in terms of race relations and the economy as well as people's willingness to move on. There are still a lot of things that are frustrating about being in South Africa.
I never hated hip-hop. It became the new rock and roll. It became the biggest thing that Africans have ever done in the history of the Americas. Hip-hop put more black Americans on than anything before it. It fed more people. It allowed them to diversify into clothing lines and billion-dollar headphone companies.
In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Well, biology today as I see it has an amiable look - quite different from the 19th-century view that the whole arrangement of nature is hostile, 'red in tooth and claw.' That came about because people misread Darwin's 'survival of the fittest.'
On the farm, I had chores. I had a calf. We had a herd of cattle in the pasture. We'd go and get me a calf at a cow auction with Amish people, which I would raise. I gave it a bottle every day, in this cute little coop, like a giant dog coop almost. I've always been a big animal person.
Most people think the Shakers are in Pennsylvania. They tend to confuse them with the Amish.
We grew up Amish, but my parents left the religion when I was a child. The Amish have lots of rules, and my dad thought many people in the faith were hypocritical because they'd tell others not to do something and then do it themselves.
My mother's people are Old Order Mennonite - horse and buggy Mennonite, very close cousins to the Amish. I grew up in Lancaster County and lived near Amish farm land.
People should not be in a position where their children have access to weapons and ammunition.
I just spent five, six years sacrificing so much to try and fit into that one ideal, that one small standard, and I was never good enough. And it was just frustration that turned into motivation... That became my ammunition, all the people that told me I couldn't.
