You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

I tried to score a few films with this composer Brian Reitzell here in L.A. We made a bunch of music we really loved, but we got fired from the film for being too weird.

Pop should be weird, and I realize as I say this that I'm not the weirdest person in the world. But if that means a girl sounding like Kylie Minogue and looking like Kurt Cobain, then so be it.

God doesn't love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face. You know, I prayed about it a long, long, long, long, long time, because there again, I wouldn't want to do anything that I felt was going to be offensive to God.

I didn't try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

When I first started out writing the 'Darkness' books, there was, at least in my mind, a certain sort of rulebook we had to follow.

I know that somewhere deep down I have the ability to act. I just need a chance to prove it.

I don't really know how to describe how I got into music - it kind of just happened.

The artist in me cries out for design.

If it doesn't start with you, it dies with you.

When someone is themselves through their music, it's soul music. James Taylor is soul music to me 'cause it's just him talking about him. It doesn't have anything to do with black or growing up in the church; it's where it comes from. It's just soul music.

I couldn't be a Taylor Swift. I would really suck at being Taylor Swift.