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

Whenever someone says they like something about my music.

A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t think of it as a job or a career – it was just something that was constant.

When you’re an adult, things mellow out. I think when you’re a teenager and you are sad and the world is ending, everything is about that one sadness.

I guess you can say I ‘do the Twist.’ I like playful dance moves that aren’t too serious.

Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.

In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I’d never stayed in one place for so long.

I’ve been very careful to always make clear that I am a real person. That’s why I’m on social media a lot.

There’s this myth that women are supposed to compete with each other or something, or we’re supposed to hate each other, and that’s totally not productive.

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.

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.

Most inspiration still comes from bicycling around San Francisco. This city never fails to inspire me. It is one of the most vibrant cities – especially visually – with a constant influx of young energy arriving daily. I love it.

If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.

Words are but the shell; meditation is the kernel.

If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story.

This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.

I get inspiration from literally everything and anything.

We are all 99.9 percent genetically equal. It is one one-hundredth of one percent of genetic material that makes the difference between any one of us.

The world wants us to be who we truly are, not who we think others want us to be.