“I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.”

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.

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.

For some reason I seem to absorb the landscape and cultures where I am planted. A State Divided Symphony was inspired by the 150th anniversary of Missouri’s entry into the Civil War.

The notion that in order to have a nation it is necessary for there to be a common language, a common territory and common culture has failed to stand the test of time or the scrutiny of scientific definition of objective reality…

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture – not only national culture but global culture.

Our democracy should reflect our culture and our habits and our customs and our reality at the same time.

Apple has a culture of excellence that is, I think, so unique and so special. I’m not going to witness or permit the change of it.

I try to communicate in a way that allows people in on what’s going on. What’s better than references to popular culture?

But our culture is in truly bad shape if we have come to define respecting something as the failure to set it on fire.

Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.