I was a really, really depressed kid.

For me, writing is just processing.

The world had taught me to dress up my trauma in short skirts and secret bathroom crying, to protect the fragility of boys at all costs.

Love your own body like your mom loved your baby feet.

Love is a mirror, a map, a lesson in unfixed gifts.

I came out when I was 17 - coming out in middle or high school is one of the most difficult things that anyone could experience. I wouldn't wish it on my enemies.

I came out when I was 17. I was in the church; I was crying every Sunday for about a year. I came to terms with the fact with this is who I was - I wasn't going to be able to be a different person. At 17, you feel like a freak already, and so to have that fire and brimstone against your attraction is just screwed up!

If I can sit down at my keyboard and have a melody that says something that I can't with words, that's a really beautiful thing.

Being in Los Angeles is this brutal awakening, where I feel not good enough as soon as I walk into a room, and I'm wearing the wrong thing, or I don't have enough make up on. It's all about image.

I think no matter how you think about your music, you're ultimately in the music 'business.' I think you have to be business-minded in some sense. And for me, the real goal... is positive intention and social change through music. It doesn't mean that can't turn a profit.