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

My father was obsessed with folk music from around the world, and I think the countless artists who performed them are my biggest influences.

I think the pressure gets to me when I play shows and there’s more people in the audience than I’m used to.

Tour isn’t good for writing, but it’s good for inspiration.

I think it’s our responsibility as artists to not only fight for our art but fight for the communities that are the reason we’re able to continue making art, especially since, in Brooklyn’s case, we as artists somehow made it ‘cool’ enough for the bigger money-making industries to start taking over.

People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.

What’s important to me is that my songs can exist without any material anything. It’s very reflective of my ideology.

I tend to kind of try to use what’s in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don’t already have.

I always have strong urges to sabotage myself.

On tour, I don’t drink, because I don’t think in any other job you are supposed to get to work and drink whisky.

I have a very conveniently photographic memory of emotions – it’s overwhelming, because things don’t fade for me.

It’s nice to know there’s a big world with many perspectives. I tend to get so stuck in my own small world easily, and going out into the world reminds me that I’m not the center of the world – in a good way.

I hope to be a writer and musician my whole life, fingers crossed.

You can never learn enough about music.

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 really believe in the power of music.

If a man is tongue-tied, don’t laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs.

A society that feels life is the most precious thing [jars against] a society that prefers death over theft, over loss of pride, over inconvenience, and so much else.

For most Americans, my Chinese music feels like a novelty and it’s not what it is for me.

Dishonoring what we feel is an epidemic that has us self-medicating as a culture and trying to numb ourselves.

I feel that one of the hardest things in acting is the way you need to switch your emotions.

He has committed everything he’s had to it. If in fact he believes that every human life was sacred, I knew that if he had his conscious awakened

This might sound masochistic or narcissistic‚ I don’t know‚ but when I’m not playing the game‚ the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness‚ in a lot of ways‚ when I’m not playing.