“I am tired of spending a little bit of money in a lot of pieces because they keep on falling apart.”

I think it’s really cool that there are people like Adele on the cover of ‘Vogue’ and ‘Rolling Stone,’ and like I think it’s really important that people are talking about your body, because if they don’t, then you’ll never be able to break that barrier.

If you have a therapist who agrees with your every word, then your brain isn’t getting proper exercise.

I said to my teacher, ‘I can’t be a singer because I’m not pretty enough, and I’m fat.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Tell that to Nell Carter, babe.’ That changed my life forever!

We have to stop this idea that we have to be a certain shape.

For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She’s a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the 80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways.

My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character – I am that character… It’s a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I’ve put them all to work onstage.

I’m constantly thinking about what I’ll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don’t know, because it’s not in your hands, you don’t make the decision.

I mean, if I was living to please people, I’d have never been in a band at all. I wouldn’t have anything awesome around. I’d just be bored.

I knew that if I wanted to stop being a pushover I had to get comfortable with small rejections myself. That took some work, but because of it I can now say no to other people with a clear conscience.

Products are a must – full stop. I’m sorry to say it, but that bob won’t look so sleek on its own – you need a little help. It doesn’t have to be the high-end stuff that they sell in the salon. Products you find in the supermarket are just as good, and sometimes better.

I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn’t understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.

I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter – I just didn’t identify as a songwriter at all.

I was given baby doll toys myself, and they proved a stark reminder that my life was expected to revolve around childbearing – just as my mom’s had before me, and her mom’s had before her.

True love is about being able to accept raw emotions, no matter how difficult.

This is how I feel about everything that’s out of your control: once you make a record, it’s not yours anymore. There’s nothing you can do. It’s the way I feel about political movements – both of those things grow on their own.

My dad liked to boil a squirrel head and suck the brains out the nose. Smaller than a chicken, bigger than a rat.

Everything is falling into pieces and those pieces are fitting into the exact places they need to.

Music is the only thing keeping the peace when I’m falling into pieces.

Stop trying to fit in places that make you leave a piece of you out.

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.

My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat.

I don’t think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.

Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake.

I don’t think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.