“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.”

I’ve been the person who hides behind people and lets everyone else do their thing, and I’ve been content there.

I’m very emotional and vulnerable.

When you start to have success, people look at you differently and expect more from you. With that comes a lot of pressure to perform, so it can be a little overwhelming.

When you first start out, people think this is super easy and you find your crew super quick. But you’ve really got to go through songwriter boot camp to find your people.

I grew up in Davenport, Iowa, but I moved to Santa Clarita, California, when I was 6.

I had all these singles come out within a two-month period, and then nothing for almost two years. You start to feel a little irrelevant. You realize how many people there are trying to be songwriters and how competitive it is and how political things can be.

If you listen to the radio, it’s all men who are emotional and women who are sexual. There’s nothing wrong with that! It definitely should be the case, but it makes me sad that women are afraid to be emotional because it makes them look weak.

I’m a very stimulated person.

I’ve written poetry most of my life.

Once I heard how deep music could touch people and what it can make you feel and all of these emotions it could bring out, I was really fascinated with it all.

I just want to write fun, interesting music that pushes boundaries and is still true to myself. I want people to feel something.

My boyfriend and I like to fight a lot. I have a lot of problems. He has a lot of problems. Somehow, we always work them out and find a way back to each other.

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.

That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.

But it is impossible for anyone to say ‘I am sacrificing myself’ without feeling bitterness.

There’s something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.

I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can’t beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.

To know that there’s a good chance that this is something that could potentially be around well after I leave this planet, it’s a good feeling.

We ought indeed to shrink from and feel shame at what is base, but nature which is over-cautious to avoid blame may be gentle and kindly, but cannot be great.

Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects.