Buffy Sainte-Marie

“I see myself as having three families: my birth family, the family that raised me, and my Cree family, who I was reunited with in my late teens, so I consider myself to be lucky.”

“If I'm interrupted, it's just a minor inconvenience, but not a disaster, because it's easy to get back where I was: that is, the paint has not changed consistency; the light has not moved.”

“I'm told I was born in Canada, but I was adopted, and I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts.”

“All my first albums, they're full of heart and emotion, and the songs are wonderful, but they wouldn't have been the takes I would have chosen.”

“The artistic process in digital art is very much the same as for making other kinds of paintings.”

“Once an artist explores the vast variety of tools and features available on the great programs, we're hooked.”

“I'm so happy to be a song-writer - I'm even surprised when I get to record anything. I consider it a considerable privilege and a blessing to have a medium of expression that has a place in the world.”

“But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools.”

“My first Macintosh was a 128k machine which I upgraded to 512k the minute it became possible.”

“I put all my time into Indian rights, and I think this is something I know something about, and I think that my time is best spent insofar as my political views are concerned.”

“I was using computers for music in the '70s, '80s and '90s, and people didn't get it. They thought you should only use computers for your taxes and making pie charts.”

“I've had a different kind of career on the periphery of show business. I've never been on any kind of corporate timetable whereby every six months I have to pop out a record like a pulping mill. I've called my own shots. When I get tired, I take time off.”

“Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what 'was' and 'were,' we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture.”

“I was an infant when I was living in Canada, but when I was adopted, I was a baby, so I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, and I returned to Saskatchewan as - in my late teens.”

“For me, the hip word is 'mutate.' We're ripening all the time.”

“I didn't get into the music business because somebody made me take piano lessons, you know. I got into music because I was a natural writer and had a lot of curiosity about sound.”

“I lead a charmed life.”

“I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.”

“Digital imaging allows both groups to rise above the limitations of mess and clutter and mechanics, and apply our talents to creating images limited only by our imaginations.”

“I was adopted without the benefit of papers. They used to hide adoption in the forties; I don't know why. Perhaps it was shameful. I could have been kidnapped - there are all kinds of crazy things that people have done - but I got over dealing with that a long time ago.”