“Still finding silly string in weird places.”

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.

Arts can save children, no matter what’s going on in their homes.

I learned that I can’t save the world, but I can help a child at a time.

My little siblings keep me grounded. I’m a kid at heart.

I’m just a shy and retreating kind of person. Sometimes I get in a real talkative mood – but not very often.

Sometimes when I visit my sister and her two children, I wonder if she missed a lot by getting married. Right now, nothing could be further from my mind than getting married.

My mom loves saris, and when I was a child, she told me ‘a girl looks good in an Indian traditional outfit.’ So, somehow it stayed in my head, and I really enjoy Indian wear.

I love kids with a passion I usually reserve for hot cheese, miniature chairs, and Prince concerts, but I feel no stress to reproduce simply because of a fear of withering eggs.

The difference between the child and the man lies chiefly in the unlimited confidence and buoyancy of youth.