“I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.”

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.

On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.

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.

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.

It’s actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth, commitment, and openness and mostly you’ll be okay.

I look at the newspapers, and I cannot believe most of the stories I read. Bernie Madoff, who actually screwed millions of people for billions of dollars.

[You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you’re listening to, where you’re not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you’re actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.

Migrants come up and no longer seek to evade the Border Patrol, but are actually left at the border by their smugglers.

That somehow distances us from actually taking part fully with the reality we do have, and that creates suffering.

I read a lot. I spend of lot time thinking. It actually looks like I’m doing nothing, but… hanging out with clever and interesting people is a must if you’re writing comedy, like hanging out with a good bass player when you’re a drummer.

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I’m working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life.