You always want what you can't have, and that all-American thing, from the day I was born, I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.
Often I've had problems automatically bending to a lover's will, becoming what I know they want me to be. Immediately, I learn all the music they love, listen to it, study it, instead of being like, 'This is what I love!'
When you are a minority, it's your job to bend, and when you love someone, you really want to make it work. Then you start to realise, 'Oh, I'm bending a lot,' and they're just standing there existing, and I'm bending around them. But you can't blame them: they don't realise it; that's just how they already existed. It's hard.
I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.
I have a very conveniently photographic memory of emotions - it's overwhelming, because things don't fade for me.
I think what's hard for me is not that I don't get downtime to chill, it's that I don't get time to make music.
You can be heartbroken about a relationship but also, from it, realize you are you, and you're okay with who you are or where you came from.
Oftentimes, the most important decisions I make are the ones I don't put much thought into.
I'm not an innovator.
I lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.
When I record, it's this very precious and insular thing.
I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in 'Teardrops On My Guitar,' and she was like, 'Isn't this song great?' And everyone was like, 'Who's Taylor Swift?' And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.
All I want to do at karaoke is sing Mariah Carey.
I'd always been fascinated by death, which sounds so morbid. Especially being a woman trying to make music, I think there's a sense that you're never young enough, or your career is going to end soon.
Honestly, in the music business, it's all about being cool or being the newest thing or being the 'It' person, and I've tried really hard to be what is expected of me or what would be advantageous to my career, and I just reached the point where I said, 'No, I'm an emotional loser. I can't pretend to not care.'
I don't really listen to pop-country, but I like really, really old country that's closer to folk. Like Johnny Cash, who is considered country.
I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn't last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn't have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.
I always have strong urges to sabotage myself. Whenever someone says they like something about my music, I tend to not want to do that anymore. It's not even that I don't like it anymore: it's that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.
I don't think I'm alone in this: I'm obsessed with trying to not only be happy but maintain happiness, but my definition of happiness is skewed more towards ecstasy rather than contentment.
I've been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.
