I really never want to try to be cool.

If I'm not writing, I can download a newer album everybody's making a fuss about. But when I'm writing, I keep myself in my own zone - I worry about listening to new music that'll inform me too much. I'm the kind of person who goes to another country and starts speaking in an accent after three days.

I have a strange, not very traditional voice - I'm not Adele.

I am fierce, yes, but I'm serious about music.

I like to have fun! And everything that's good for you is not fun, and that bores me.

I don't know if I could write a pop song without at least a little touch of bite in it, and it's usually not a bite that most people would want to sing.

One of the things that 'Too Bright' refers to is how there's a lot of times where I see things that I could change that could make me more contented, but I usually just don't make those changes because they seem new and scary. I just stay where I'm at, even if I'm miserable, because I'm familiar with it.

I've had people tell me that I should just be sad and not joke around on Twitter, but they don't understand that joking and being deeply sad are very close to each other. I'll have a horrible memory that I find hysterical one day, and the next day I'll cry about it.

I think people are surprised that I'm not - I think people come up to talk to me, and they think I'm going to be really morose. And I am, but I do that by myself - no one wants to see that. It's not really a phoniness; I just kind of keep it to myself. So I think people are surprised when they come up to talk to me and I hug them.

iTunes is my favorite record store.

I saw 'Predators.' That was pretty good, actually.

There's a book called 'You're Not a Stranger Here' by Adam Haslett - short stories, a lot of them are about mental illness and gay people - that classic combination. But they're really well-written, really powerful. It's pretty good.

I sort of trust myself as a musician to experiment more and to know when things are more effective when they're spare and when a song can hold up to a lot of different instrumentations. So I'm more willing to go for it.

Blushes are fun. I like to do circles - like a Caravaggio painting almost, or Victorian looking.

I was scared of the devil starting around age nine. Before that, I was gathering every family member in the living room, slipping a shirt over my robe so the bottom hung like a skirt and performing Gloria Estefan songs with feverish intensity.

I don't ever necessarily feel masculine or feminine. I just feel... I don't know. Like, when I'm wearing women's clothes, it's not like I'm dressing like a lady, a woman; it's just like I'm doing whatever I want.

I was really scared of the devil growing up: I was convinced I was going to be possessed.

I've had people send messages that said, 'I'm sorry how I treated you in high school.' It was just through kindness. I still think of the world the same way I did growing up. When I got hurt, I decided that this is how people are. But the world is changing, and even those people have changed. And I have. I need to let go, too.

My favorite movie is 'Dogfight' with River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. The ending is kind of bittersweet but so real and moving and complicated.

For a while, I thought I would maybe be a writer. But with music, I was such a nerd; I was really obsessive about it. The problem was I couldn't really sing. I think one day I sang from a different part of my body, from my gut for the first time, and I was like, 'Oh! That's how you're supposed to do it.'

Music helped me, growing up: it very much felt like a companion and made me less lonely.

There was one time I flagged every 'Brokeback Mountain' review on Netflix that was negative. I was, like, 'not helpful,' and I spent, like, an hour doing it, and I wrote a really serious review about it. It's hard for me not to get really sensitive. I don't brush things off like that very easily.

I think if you know one direction, then you can feel the other one. I don't think you can be truly, insanely joyous if you haven't ever felt the flip side of it.

I'm pretty sure I would have managed to over-share no matter what time period I was born in. It's a family thing, too.