I've always felt my spirit animal was a Tiger, so it's funny that now in 'Roar' with Katy Perry - which is a song we write together - there's the line: "I got the eye of the Tiger..." So I feel like there's a little bit of me in there.

I got called to write for Aerosmith, nothing ever came of it, but I ended up spending the day with Steven Tyler and going to his house and we sat down at the piano, just me and him, and he sang for me and played, then he asked me to sing for him, and then we sang harmony together. That was just a big moment where it was like 'oh my god, my life is crazy!' It was really cool.

I'd like to go the Cher route and act and sing and write and have a TV show and do it all.

It's just funny that anybody would care at all to take apart the words that I write. It's kind of cool!

It's nice to really have the freedom to write what I want.

When I go and write with other artists - a lot of the time it's with them - it's like a therapy session almost. I ask them what they're listening to and what they're going through and what their influences are and I try to get inside of their head and step into their shoes for a second.

When I write for myself, I just get to be myself.

Sometimes I write a song and I'm down with it but I'm like yeah, whatever, and then everybody loves it and then it blows up. I'm like: "Okay! I didn't see that coming."

There's a feeling that you get when you write songs where... it feels like it's destined to do something. Then sometimes you get that feeling with a song and it never goes anywhere, that happens all the time too, so you never really know.