I work really well under pressure but I really hate doing things on a timeframe.

It's really hard for me to sometimes put myself out there, like 'Hey, how do you feel about making music together?' because maybe I'm afraid of rejection or I don't want to put anybody out. It's the Southerner in me, like, 'I don't mean to bother you but do you mind making a song?'

I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine.

Even talking, I'm super-loud. I could never have that kind of meek, little wispy whimsical lavender and lace voice. It comes from my body. There's no way I can fight it.

I just like food too much, and I don't want to change. I spent so much of childhood trying to change, and I just got sick of it... I don't want to look like Britney Spears, I just don't want to. She's hideous.

As a kid, I was always mad - just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don't want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.

'Get a Job' is about all the rich kids we knew when we were younger, kids who never had jobs but always had money for partying or getting their hair done.

I'm not sure that I am able to feel embarrassment.

I've had a ton of fast-food jobs - it changes your approach to human interaction forever.

I don't feel famous and I didn't want my autobiography to be like a Paris Hilton story.

I have a lot of feminist idols. My favorite thing about growing up in Arkansas - well, not favorite but something I've always felt grateful for - was that I really had to dig for what I could. There was no Internet. There wasn't tons of feminist literature floating around.

I really worshipped Mama Cass a lot. Mama Cass, who was really fat and she didn't lose weight. Yeah, she went on diets but for the most part of her life and the better part of her career she was a big person.

Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredibly Christian background, but there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.

I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.

You live in this shadow that you're going to burn in Hell until you're saved. And I still worry about it a little. I don't believe in Heaven, but I do still fear Hell.

I was overcome by the Holy Ghost one time, but in a Baptist way. I was six or seven, and I was saved. I just cried and cried. It was joy!

Do I ever think Gossip will be really massive in America? No, I don't think it'll happen - and that's fine. It's kind of nice because I get to experience everything at once. I get to come home and it not be weird, like in Paris or something. It is nice to be completely anonymous.

I've had people ask me in interviews what it's like to have money, but that's not how it is. I have a middle-class life. I have a room in London but not a house, nor a BMW.

I want to make the IKEA of clothes for fat girls and boys. Cheap, affordable, basic - but ethically made. Basics, you know? Like Spanx - I'm still confused as to why retailers haven't ripped them off yet and done it well. It's because they don't understand the basics behind it. I love Spanx. I'm wearing 'em right now!

Starting out really punk came from not knowing any better and listening to music like that, not knowing how to play music - well, still not knowing how to play music.

I mean, if I was living to please people, I'd have never been in a band at all. I wouldn't have anything awesome around. I'd just be bored.

For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She's a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the '80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways.

My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn't stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn't have his blood.

Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued; Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them?

My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character - I am that character... It's a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I've put them all to work onstage.

Girls are taught to sing high and pretty, like Antony, not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we're slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we're not told growing up, and it's our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it.

I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad.

I'm passionate about color. My best friend and I sit and look at Pantone books for fun.

I think that for the five-year-old watching MTV right now, Lady Gaga is going to be an iconic person. In 20 years, the people who are here and talking to journalists will be like, 'Oh Lady Gaga changed my life, Nicki Minaj changed my life.' They'll be saying who influenced them and it will be Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, artists like that.

Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It's proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.

A few years back, when my style was 'punk grandma,' I picked up an amazing pair of sandals - orthopaedic ones, with really thick soles. I've given them away to a friend now, because these days my look is more '1980s substitute teacher gone wild.'

I don't have a good attention span and can't spend long in record stores or video shops or games emporiums without getting grumpy.

I've belched a lot more since I had gall bladder surgery. I don't know why.

You know, either I'm too fat or I'm flavour of the month. I don't feel either, but maybe I'm both, who knows?

I was always being told off at school. The teachers would say: 'Everyone's talking, but you're the one I can hear.'

All this fashion stuff - who's cool now - is just a bigger version of the cool kids versus the nerds.

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.

A weird thing about Gossip that I've always said: 'If I weren't in this band, I would never listen to it.' But I would go see it. It's a band you would go see that you don't necessarily listen to. We've always wanted to do a live album because personally, I think we're a way better band live than on record.

You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There's nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.

ABBA was a direct influence on me.

I'm shameless, and I love a pun. There's a lot of Beth puns.

Why wear pants when you can wear a muumuu?