“Working with new people can be really hard and nerve-wracking. When you don’t know the person, it’s like being on a blind date.”

When you first start out, people think this is super easy and you find your crew super quick. But you’ve really got to go through songwriter boot camp to find your people.

I grew up in Davenport, Iowa, but I moved to Santa Clarita, California, when I was 6.

I had all these singles come out within a two-month period, and then nothing for almost two years. You start to feel a little irrelevant. You realize how many people there are trying to be songwriters and how competitive it is and how political things can be.

If you listen to the radio, it’s all men who are emotional and women who are sexual. There’s nothing wrong with that! It definitely should be the case, but it makes me sad that women are afraid to be emotional because it makes them look weak.

I’m a very stimulated person.

I’ve written poetry most of my life.

Once I heard how deep music could touch people and what it can make you feel and all of these emotions it could bring out, I was really fascinated with it all.

I just want to write fun, interesting music that pushes boundaries and is still true to myself. I want people to feel something.

My boyfriend and I like to fight a lot. I have a lot of problems. He has a lot of problems. Somehow, we always work them out and find a way back to each other.

I definitely always thought of myself as a songwriter before a singer.

My sister was the singer, and I always had the mentality there could only be one in the family.

I just remember really loving words and writing about anything I could, and the way I’d remember things, like my library card number, was to make a melody.

If I get writer’s block – this is going to sound funny – I take a shower. Something about the water feels like I’m cleaning my brain as well as my body.

I just wanted to write the songs. I never wanted to sing them.

I think artists are aware that talking gives a songwriter so much material. If they just tell us what’s happening, it’s so much easier for us to write a song that’s specific to them.

I would give anything to hold your hands like this again.

I started making remixes for every specific girl I wanted to date. That’s how I learned how to use Pro Tools, and then I started making my own music.

Sometimes when you make good stuff and you love it, it gets outdated sometimes, because you’ve held on to it so long, you may not like it like you used to.

In times of speed dating, focus on real connections and wild soulful sex.

Be the kind of person you want to date.

After a number of years dating, we decided we were good partners.

People think Selena and The Weeknd are dating for publicity, and that’s not how things works. These are real human beings. They don’t just date to get more famous. They’re already the most famous artists!

I was dating a transvestite, and my mother said, “Marry him, you’ll double your wardrobe.”

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.