"I didn’t feel comfortable with American children. I certainly knew more about sex and drugs by the time I was eleven than they would ever know. My father used to ask me when I was thirteen if I needed a diaphragm. I said, ‘No, Dad, really, I’m still a virgin.’ He said, ‘you let me know when you’re not.'"

“People assume that there must have been tension between us, but the truth is I wanted to be just like Cass. Cass liberated me; she stopped John trying to have too much control over me. She taught me a lot about feminism, and she always encouraged me, although I was obviously inferior to her as a singer.”

“Cass gained a lot of strength from her public. Once she was a star, she wasn't afraid of anybody, and certainly not me.”

“I would not let her work until she was eighteen, and believe me, since the time she was being strolled down the street in her stroller, people were saying, “Can I use her in my commercial? Can I put her in my movie?” “No!” But I did let her take any class that she wanted to take. Singing, acting, dancing...”

“We toured in a Lear jet and that's the only way to fly, baby! Success is a bubble, though, and we knew the wonderful time we were having couldn't possibly last.”

“I was raised to be very independent. I was raised to believe I could do anything I wanted with my life. My father said I was lucky to be born a woman because "women can do anything they want" with their lives. Of course, I didn't realize until later that my father was giving me a slightly unrealistic view, but I think that gave me a lot of confidence.”

“I like what’s happening to me now in every way. When you’re twenty, you handle it a lot differently than when you’re thirty—and I’m thirty-three. I was naïve enough to think it would be easy to get here. It wasn’t.”