“There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.”

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I don’t like two stories. I like one story. I never grew up with stairs. I like to stick to what I know.

I don’t try and be dark, but there are obviously darker emotions that I want to capture sometimes.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

Treasure, that is what you are.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

I think that success is having fun.

Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I’m going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It’s always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.

To write a song you must have an imagination, to have an imagination you must be free.

If I was a billionaire, I’d be smart with my money.

Becoming famous was never what I wanted to do. There’s a lot of things that come with fame – it’s what people in the limelight have to do.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

People can hear my songs are coming from something real. I mean what I say; I’m not just writing to impress critics or young girls, or older girls. The way I talk is the way I write a song.

My dad was just the king of finding these little spots for us to stay that we should never have been staying at.

There will never be another Michael Jackson, a huge pop star since (the age of) 7.

When I see your face, there’s not a thing that I would change ’cause you’re are amazing just the way you are.

Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.

Make-up sex, as treacherous as it can be, becomes this fun and playful thing versus this really intense thing. To me the song feels playful.

In 1968, I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry, and unhappy like we do.

And when you’re feeling empty, keep me memory, and leave out all the rest, leave out all the rest.

It’s been an interesting life. I feel like I’m 40 years old at the age of 16.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.

Anyone I may have used should feel happy that they even had a use. It’s better than being useless.

I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom.