Mitchell: "My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species."

Mitchell: "People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal."

Mitchell: "My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention."

Mitchell: "I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy."

Mitchell: "America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill."

Mitchell: "We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy."

Mitchell: "When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark."

Mitchell: "Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980."

Mitchell: "I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world."

Mitchell: "Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name."

Mitchell: "I believe that I am male and I am female."

Mitchell: "Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep."

Mitchell: "My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye."

Mitchell: "With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again."

Mitchell: "Back then, I didn't have a big organization around me. I was just a kid with a guitar, traveling around. My responsibility basically was to the art, and I had extra time on my hands. There is no extra time now. There isn't enough time."

Mitchell: "I see music as fluid architecture."

Mitchell: "You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining."

Mitchell: "I see bodies as individual things."