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When folk singer Janis Ian became a child star in 1966, it was rare for a 15-year-old performer to be a national celebrity. But her first recorded song, "Society's Child," about the end of an interracial romance, became a controversial best-seller that led her to drop out of high school and hang around with Bob Dylan and Leonard Bernstein.

In the decades since, Ian, now 57, has made and lost a fortune, divorced a man and married a woman, suffered some serious health problems and never stopped writing music. A number of her songs, like "At Seventeen," have become standards. Her autobiography, "Society's Child" (Tarcher, $26.95), debuts today in conjunction with the release of a compilation of her music, "The Best of Janis Ian." We spoke with her recently about fame, fortune and her evil twin.

"You get your mistakes out of the way early, or most of them anyway. You're still fresh, and it's a freshness you can never recover. When you get old, you've got all that craft to back you up, but you don't have that sense of wonder, that 'Wow, I wrote a song.' "

"I might still stand a chance on the strength of being a songwriter, which is what has always gotten me through. But nowadays, unless you're a 15-year-old with a 10-album contract with Sony, you can work your butt off your entire life and get nowhere. You're either Toby Keith or you're me, and grateful for the work. There isn't much in between anymore."

"I don't know. When I was a kid, I was considered very strange because I wanted to be famous. It was a rarer ambition. Today, it's so easy to become famous for a minute that everybody thinks they can do it. But the running around being famous, the perks, that's just the silly stuff. It's the music that endures."

"Probably. But I treated it like a song — if I hit a point where it was a little painful or scary, I thought, 'OK, that's where I need to go.' I tried to keep it truthful, hopefully without whining. I didn't want to bleed all over everybody."

"The world has become more civilized. I can't be locked up for being gay. Of course, I also can't get married and have full rights."

"She's so right. In my mind, I was never rich, I just had enough money to stay home. When I found out I didn't, it was heartbreaking. The great thing about going through what I went through is you know you can survive. You're your own safety net."

"When I was offered "You Light Up My Life," I could smell it was a hit. Today you can still hear a hit, but if the record company doesn't do the right stuff, you don't have a hit. Every artist, if they have any sense, looks for a career song, the one song, like "At Seventeen," that will give them longevity. Record companies used to be more interested in longevity. People now might have one or two records and then they're done. There's a much harsher winnowing process."

"I went to see Bette Midler; she's such a great performer. It was embarrassing, but there was a corner of me that was jealous. But part of being an artist is always looking up, always going, 'Why aren't I that good?' "

"In my 40s, I realized I would never be the youngest again, never be considered amazing again, that I was being looked up to by two generations of songwriters. I had to accept that I had moved into a mentoring age, and I could go gracefully or go kicking and screaming. I remember when I was a kid thinking, 'When I grow up, no one is ever going to tell me what to do again.' How nice to be so innocent."