“Still finding silly string in weird places.”

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.

We could be history in the making.

I write songs for myself, but I never keep them. I’m like, ‘O.K., that was my therapy – it’s out of my body now. I’m going to give it to somebody else so it can be their therapy, too.’

Women often don’t want to be typecast as the girl that’s sad.

There is so much power in vulnerability, and I am proud to be that typecast.

It’s ingrained in people’s minds that it’s a typecast and a stereotype that women are just emotional and crazy.

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.

How strange when an illusion dies. It’s as though you’ve lost a child.

The facts of life are that a child who has seen war cannot be compared with a child who doesn’t know what war is except from television.

There is a world up ahead where people are not targeted for beliefs or bodies, where peace isn’t a fantasy but reality. Build the world you hope your children will see.

See, my children, a person who is in a state of sin is always sad. Whatever he does, he is weary and disgusted with every thing; while he who is at peace with God is always happy, always joyous. . . Oh, beautiful life! Oh, beautiful death!

As a woman, especially when you have children, one gets so good at soldiering on – almost too good.

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.