Allison Anders

Music has always been a great solace for me. It's still something that gives me far more joy than movies, I must say. I love movies, too. But somehow, music can transport you. There are so many different kinds of experiences you can have with music.

It was such a struggle for me to make it off welfare. I was getting $630 a month for myself and my children with no support from their fathers. The rent was $600 a month, and if you got a job, they took it out of your welfare.

Though builders may build, in the main they follow the plans of architects. Teachers teach, but they must have a text. Politicians govern, but only upon the flow of commentary that raises them up or casts them down.

Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.