“I find inspiration everywhere. I love challenges and my favorite thing is to find something ridiculous and be like “if it’s all that I have available to me, I am gonna make it look the best that I can”.”

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.

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

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

I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself, and that is so important. And not just about your body, but so many ways of confidence. You’re constantly learning how to be confident, aren’t you?

When you get a certain amount of media attention, I think people are like, “Where’s your other album?”

I’ve belched a lot more since I had gall bladder surgery. I don’t know why.

I have a very good relationship with myself. My favourite quote is, “What you think about me is none of my business.”

We weren’t idiots, but I didn’t have that access to academic feminism. I had to realize, on my own, that feminism is not just about how far ahead you can get in a job and it isn’t about not wearing makeup. It isn’t about not watching your waistline. I had to recreate the world entirely.

A few years back, when my style was “punk grandma”, I picked up an amazing pair of sandals – orthopaedic ones, with really thick soles. I’ve given them away to a friend now, because these days my look is more “1980s substitute teacher gone wild.”

Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredible Christian background, and where there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.

I support love any healthy way you can get it.

ABBA was a direct influence on me.

God knew we would make mistakes. Life is all about mistakes. It is constant change and growth. Our greatest challenges in life will one day be known to us as our greatest teachers.

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

You have a challenge; never quit!

[on BBC’s Sherlock] It’s a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It’s a form of mental and physical gymnastics.

Permaculture challenges what we’re doing and thinking – and to that extent it’s sedition.

I guess I just like to challenge myself and push myself harder to do things that I dont think I can, to do things that other people do not think I can. It pushes me. I push my own personal limits.

I need a little criticism while I make a record so that I kind of feel like: okay, I know that I’m doing the best that I can do because someone is actually here challenging it.

I certainly want campaign finance reform. I just wish this would do it in a way that would stand up to a constitutional challenge.