“When I was younger I used to be really into photography, and I still am, I just don’t really get to do it besides taking my own artists photos and stuff like that.”

If I don’t see a music video to it while writing it, I just scrap it immediately. It’s very visual.

I also made a lot of really great friends on that show [the Voice], so that’s one of the most important things that I’ve taken out of that experience.

I was genuinely happy when I wrote that song [Training Wheels] and very in love. That’s a very rare emotion to evoke out of me.

It’s very hard to be an artist, on my first album, and I’m like asking for money for a music video for every song – it’s so hard to do. You have to pick your battles for sure, but I definitely want – and I’ve always worked to make it all connect – for all of it to feel cohesive.

And still as an adult like I do as well, you know what I mean like I literally just cried in the first interview that I had today. Like, I’m just a very emotional human.

It’s just weird because like when I was writing Cry Baby I like the only thing that I was thinking about, when writing it, was the concepts and the visuals, and the way that it sounded kind of happened naturally.

I don’t really think about what people think of my music, and how they listen to it or what my demographic is.

Make sure this [music industry] is what you love to do, and you can’t imagine doing anything else.

When I first started writing the album, “Cry Baby” was a song that I really wanted to write because it represented all of these personal insecurities that I had for a long time.

Cry Baby is a character so I think that the next album is going to be about a specific thing in her life or another place in her world. It’s going to be a bit deeper into a bigger picture.

I think, being emotional is this thing that people think you’re not strong. They don’t look at you as a strong person, and it’s weird ‘cuz honestly being emotional has nothing to do with your strength.

I obviously have a different connection to each song in a different way, and they all mean something different to me.

It’s like visual is super important to me. So if I am writing a song, like, I have to have the title.

I love directing my music videos and writing video treatments, and I think it’s all just because I love the visual aspect of it as well.

Eventually I realized that Cry Baby was a character that was based off of me, and that we had a lot of similarities.

I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion – and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way.

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill.

I am not a businessman, I am an artist.

There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounces possessions.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

I want to get to the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply.

The artist’s role isn’t to tell people how to feel, but reflect.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work.