“An artist could have a really big relationship, and then they break up, and any song after that, people are automatically going to assume that that song is about that person.”

I definitely always thought of myself as a songwriter before a singer.

My sister was the singer, and I always had the mentality there could only be one in the family.

I just remember really loving words and writing about anything I could, and the way I’d remember things, like my library card number, was to make a melody.

If I get writer’s block – this is going to sound funny – I take a shower. Something about the water feels like I’m cleaning my brain as well as my body.

I just wanted to write the songs. I never wanted to sing them.

I think artists are aware that talking gives a songwriter so much material. If they just tell us what’s happening, it’s so much easier for us to write a song that’s specific to them.

I would give anything to hold your hands like this again.

We could be history in the making.

Still finding silly string in weird places.

I write songs for myself, but I never keep them. I’m like, ‘O.K., that was my therapy – it’s out of my body now. I’m going to give it to somebody else so it can be their therapy, too.’

Women often don’t want to be typecast as the girl that’s sad.

There is so much power in vulnerability, and I am proud to be that typecast.

It’s ingrained in people’s minds that it’s a typecast and a stereotype that women are just emotional and crazy.

Plantin’ lemon trees since I was twenty-three

People are going to assume whatever they want to assume.

Hula-hooping. It makes me feel free. My stepsister introduced me to it. I used to have panic attacks all the time, and she hula-hooped to cope with her own anxiety.

The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.

A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.

Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life’s artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

The artist draws the people. The whole idea is for people to dig themselves, just mingle around meeting different other people. That’s cool.

I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards – in the life of an artist.

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.

That’s just a part of being an artist: you can’t write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you’d be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.