“I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.”

I couldn’t wait to get out of school, but once I did, I didn’t actually know what I wanted to do with myself. I don’t really know how it happened, but I just started writing music and realized that’s what I wanted to do.

I really like The Cars. They’re just so over the top and super pop, but I don’t feel guilty. I’m proud of all the music I listen to.

I was one of those girls people called ‘intense.’

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 feel like I’ve always wanted to live in one place and stay in one place, but I always end up choosing things that make me travel.

When you are a minority, it’s your job to bend, and when you love someone, you really want to make it work.

It would actually feel forced or unnatural to try to do a different singing style or to try to change my sound completely.

I was a film major because, for some reason, I thought that that was a creative job that had more job opportunities. I don’t know what logic I was following, but that was my impression at the time.

I don’t want to be elitist.

I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.

Maybe this is a made-up belief to preserve myself, but I do believe that everyone has a purpose, and my purpose is to put out music that means something.

When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to… I finally feel like myself.

What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.

I don’t want to be a musician’s musician. I want to be an everyone’s musician.

I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.

Being an outsider at all times is both unhealthy and useful, because you become much more objective about things.

I motivate others by making sure that they understand to go after their dreams and dont let anyone tell you you cant. If you are motivated enough and put the work in that you can achieve anything in life that you set your mind to.

I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

Anyone who spends time on the road knows there’s something special about being in the middle of Utah or Nebraska – you sit with it, and there’s a peace about it. You can go left or right, and it opens up all kinds of doors. You take your own path.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

It is no harder for anyone to test this than it is for me to say it is false, since no one is prevented from counting teeth.

I’m a father, a son, and a grandson, and if anyone messed with my wife, mom, or grandmother, and if the law didn’t care about it, what would I do? Would I be defined by that action?

Strength is not nearly as important as desire. I don’t think you can teach anyone desire. I think it’s a gift. I don’t know why I have it, but I do.

Anyway, I just haven’t been able to find any humanity in any Republican candidate ever in my entire life.