I put 'Ghost' online hoping to make a couple hundred bucks, but then the next day, I took meetings with five different record companies.
You can be accessible without catering to an audience.
I love Quentin Tarantino; I love Harmony Korine, Larry Clarke.
I had a crazy life for a teenager. I lived in New Jersey, but I'd go to Vermont for three weeks, join a commune, take pictures with the guy I was dating, come back home, and post photos.
I'm learning slowly to not be as much of a control freak. I can't afford to be all the time, but I'm getting better at communicating. Delegating parts of my vision for other people to execute has made it an easier process for knowing what I want, and what people can handle, and what I should probably save for myself.
Please don't erase my race because I'm white-passing. There is literally nothing I can do about my complexion.
There are conspiracy theorists who think I was crafted in a boardroom. Because I'm so very relatable and so very topical and so very Tumblr.
You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you're not inspired, and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived, and I don't like to write music that's contrived.
The cool thing about my show and me is that I'm a writer, and I'm a writer first if I don't have music.
I have this first album that sells more than 100,000 copies in its first week, debuts at number two, goes gold, the single goes platinum, we're doing Madison Square Garden.
I cultivated this fan base that I really didn't really understand or appreciate until I put my first headlining tour up for sale. 500- to 1,000-capacity rooms weren't an underplay for me at the time. I'd never done a tour before!
That's one thing the musicians don't remember: you don't choose your demographic - they choose you.
I think, growing up in a small town - I grew up in a lot of different places. I grew up in a city environment, a more suburban environment, a more rural environment. That's the beauty of New Jersey is you get a lot of different types of living.
The idea of 'Badlands' was creating a space with sound, which is a really difficult thing to do.
I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.
I'm a human, and I'm multidimensional. If I was the perfect form of anything, I'd be boring. If I was a free spirit all the time, I would be boring; I would lack depth. If I was dark and enigmatic all the time, then I would lack relatability.
I like writing about places, about people and environments. When I create a world, it lets me go in and define the details of that world.
I think escapism is something artists write about pretty frequently - it's something everyone can relate to, the concept of wanting something more, wanting to find solace, wanting to have something better.
Whether it's writing songs, being on stage, being interviewed, meeting fans - I just try to be myself, which is kind of exhausting because it almost feels like it never shuts off.
I'm a fixer, unfortunately. I'm like, 'Oh, I can fix you.' But it's not just guys I'm dating anymore. It's this entire legion of young girls who tell me they need me to maintain any sort of sanity or peace.