I was obsessed with learning about social behaviors. I remember explaining to my mom that kids on my soccer team were fighting because of dyads and triads.

I used to work at a punk venue in Pennsylvania because I wanted to be near music.

The cool thing about my show and me is that I'm a writer, and I'm a writer first if I don't have music.

I have to remember for every kid saying something awful, there's a kid saying something great.

The idea of 'Badlands' was creating a space with sound, which is a really difficult thing to do.

You numb yourself so you're not terrified when you're on TV at 7 o'clock in the morning with Justin Bieber, who you just met a couple of days before, having to perform in front of millions of people.

Please don't erase my race because I'm white-passing. There is literally nothing I can do about my complexion.

As a songwriter, pop music really is a love and a joy and a science, and I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural.

The 'Room 93' EP was just kind of picking apart the sense of voyeurism and the sense of isolation and turning it into, essentially, a little black book and reflecting on - at that time - 19 years of me forming relationships with people.

When you're an artist, you're expected to describe yourself in interviews every day in five words.

You can be accessible without catering to an audience.

I learned how quickly I could go from having never met someone to having the world think I'm dating them.

In 2016, makeup has become an incredible passion and hobby for men and women, but it hasn't become mainstream.

A guitar can be so human, so sorrowful, so angry, and I wanted to figure out how to achieve that vibe without having to actually use guitars, because 'Badlands' is a very futuristic record - and making it that in an era of futuristic music is a really hard thing to do!

I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.

I'm not actually even a very good singer. I'm not.

I didn't even realize I was writing songs - I thought I was just being witty and sarcastic.

Most artists, their 60th show was in front of no one. My first show was in front of 1,200 people.

I hate feeling like a prisoner. I show up somewhere, and I can't explore the city because there's, like, 6,000 to 10,000 people on the lookout for me.

I was a weirdo. I think I wanted to be liked, but I didn't have the attention or bother to actually make an effort to be. I also think I had a different perception of what I needed to do to be liked.

I think, growing up in a small town - I grew up in a lot of different places. I grew up in a city environment, a more suburban environment, a more rural environment. That's the beauty of New Jersey is you get a lot of different types of living.

Every song I write is autobiographical and is about people, and that's one of the things that gets complicated. You have to decide where's your place as a songwriter.

So many people are concerned with being the perfect 'something.' Whether it's the perfect singer, the perfect sexy girl, or the perfect feminist. I don't want to be the perfect anything.

At the end of the day, every decision I make about my music is about creating a collective.

You can expect nothing in being a musician, and you have to be just very thankful every time it goes positively for you.

I want any kid who listens to my music to see that I am confident with all elements of my personality that I can't change.

Every 16-year-old person has a love for pop in them because pop is popular.

Being a musician, people ask you a lot about what musicians inspire you, and there's plenty of musicians that I love and respect, but I think that I'm the most inspired by cinema.

I want to be treated like a musician.

My first album was called 'Badlands,' and it's something that I think I'm most proud of having done in my life.

I put so much of myself out there and make myself so accessible that sometimes I fear I make myself too accessible.

I have this first album that sells more than 100,000 copies in its first week, debuts at number two, goes gold, the single goes platinum, we're doing Madison Square Garden.

In one week, I went from being a girl who owed a guy thousands of dollars - my manager Anthony was paying for my outfits, paying for my food; I was sleeping in his parents' basement - to taking meetings with every major label in America. The next morning, I had a record deal and wrote him a cheque to pay back all that money.

People around me like me the best when I'm depressed because I'm a bit more passive.

If I go out there and am myself, and I do what makes me comfortable and what I think is true to my artistry, and they don't like it, then that's fine. I walk off stage, and I know there's nothing there's nothing I could have done differently.

My mom has every issue of 'Billboard' I've ever been in.

Everything that I hate about myself goes away when I was onstage.

I was a fan of One Direction when I was 16, but I was also a fan of Bring Me The Horizon and hardcore bands.

To be fair, I did come out of nowhere. 'Ghost' was the first song I ever did in a studio, my first time ever cutting a professional vocal.

I like writing about places, about people and environments. When I create a world, it lets me go in and define the details of that world.

I made up 'Badlands'; anything I say, goes. I came to realize I was materializing a metaphor for my mental state.