“You can be heartbroken about a relationship but also, from it, realize you are you, and you’re okay with who you are or where you came from.”

I don’t want to be elitist.

I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.

Maybe this is a made-up belief to preserve myself, but I do believe that everyone has a purpose, and my purpose is to put out music that means something.

When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to… I finally feel like myself.

What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.

I don’t want to be a musician’s musician. I want to be an everyone’s musician.

I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.

Being an outsider at all times is both unhealthy and useful, because you become much more objective about things.

I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.

I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn’t identify as that before I came here.

I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in ‘Teardrops On My Guitar,’ and she was like, ‘Isn’t this song great?’ And everyone was like, ‘Who’s Taylor Swift?’ And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.

I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.

I tend to not want to do that anymore. It’s not even that I don’t like it anymore: it’s that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.

I’m punk, but I love gold.

I actually love the summer. When I went to Miami on tour, I was actually like, ‘I love this place.’

I’m not an innovator.

You have to be ready, and also you have to discard notions that are fondly held by a lot of musicians, about sequences and notes and about scales and musical systems as a whole. If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.

It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them.

And, it’s also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work.

Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.

It’s cool but also a little creepy.

I allow readers to fill in the details as necessary. But I don’t force kids to have to digest something they’re not mature enough or ready for yet.

You want to have fun but you also want to work well. Sometimes I was quite happy at Ferrari, because we would have fun, but then they could not stop having fun and go back to the real work.

Whenever I climb I have to also entertain.