Pop music is not a threatening style of music.

My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.

You got nothing to lose. You don't lose when you lose fake friends.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Make your own victories. Make your own mistakes.

Girls have got balls. They're just a little higher up, that's all.

Other people will call me a rebel, but I just feel like I'm living my life and doing what I want to do. Sometimes people call that rebellion, especially when you're a woman.

I think I was born strong-willed. That's not the kind of thing you can learn. The advantage is, you stick to what you believe in and rarely get pushed out of what you want to do.

You want to have butterflies in your stomach, because if you don't, if you walk out onstage complacent, that's not a good thing.

I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.

Success isn't one straight line - it's a ladder, and there's always another rung above you to reach out for. Like anything else, there are ups and downs.

I don't give a damn about my reputation. You're living in the past, it's a new generation.

Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.

Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct.

It's impossible to feel good about yourself if you are doing things that you aren't proud of. . . . It's essential that you . . . [do] things you can respect and admire.

I wish that I myself did have faith in God, that I had a religion, sometimes. But not always.

My job is to help more people have jobs.

Giving up was never an option

I became very aware of how important it is to connect with children - possibly for the children, if they're in the mood for that - but certainly for the adults.

No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.

I don't want only a career.

I am alive. I am so alive. It's unbelievable how alive I am.