"On a shelf behind Reed’s desk, amid Velvet Underground-­related books and music... was a notarized, self-addressed package, to and from Lewis Reed at his parents’ address on Long Island."

"It appeared to contain a tape, and was postmarked May, 1965, when Reed was twenty-three, working as a songwriter at Pickwick Records, living with his parents, and busking on street corners with his new friend John Cale. 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' would come out two years later. Should they open it? They spent years deciding. 'We were treating it like a relic,' Anderson said. They finally did, and the results, an album called 'Words & Music: May 1965,' came out [last] month."

From "Unboxing Lou Reed’s Posthumous Parcel to Himself/After the death of the Velvet Underground front man, two archivists and his widow, Laurie Anderson, discovered a mysterious sealed package from 1965. Inside was treasure: never-before-heard, folky versions of 'Heroin' and other classics" (The New Yorker). 

"We didn’t think about women and men. We never thought we’d make a living."

Said Laurie Anderson, talking about living as an artist in NYC in the 70s and 80s, quoted in "Margaret Atwood and Laurie Anderson talk art, age and more" (a very skimpy AP article).

Responding to Anderson's affiliation with the set of persons called "artists" and not "women," Atwood said: "I’m from Canada... there weren’t any other artists."

I'd like a full transcript of that conversation, but there's basically nothing in the AP article but those 2 quotes. So here's Laurie Anderson on Letterman in 1984: