I really want to work with Rufus Wainwright. Michael Stipe from R.E.M. I would love to work with Kanye West.

I listen to all types of different music. I go to different festivals. I'm around music.

You're put in certain situations and it kind of opens up those doors and it opens up your eyes to realize what your true calling was.

Brandy is one of my favorite vocalists. Jay-Z is my favorite emcee outside of Biggie.

I really was kind of like a musical nerd. I would watch VH1's 'Behind The Music.' That was heavy when I was a kid. I would sit up and want to watch that all day instead of going outside sometimes.

A song is a song and a hit record can change a life.

When you're an artist, you can only do your own stuff. Even if you only write for other people, you're really more focused on yourself. So while everybody's out touring, I'm working on records.

There's a bunch of people who sit around and make excuses for themselves and get upset with artists, but you already know what this is - it's an ego-driven business.

I don't believe in writing people off.

Not to be arrogant, but I have a lot of hits, so my phone stay ringing, but it's consistent.

It's a gift that I have and I became good at it. When I heard my first song I didn't even know that I could write songs.

Silence has never brought us anything of worth.

Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a comparatively late phenomenon in history.

One can be a soldier without dying and a lover without sighing.

Whenever we condemn, we cloak the world in pain.

At fourteen, you really do start realising that the world is not a safe and protected place or not always.

Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the stature of a child and the face of a man.

Besides, the normal people here wouldn’t see it. That was what “different” meant. It’s just another word for lonely.

Oh, Snap," I say. "What?" "Sorry. I was flashing back to 2005.

... can life be made undignified by any act of man?

Give me the compliments. I love compliments. I was born modest, but it wore off.