When I find myself having to share a meal with someone who simply wants to complain about the world, I almost feel myself wanting to crawl out of my skin and just sort of scurry away. But being able to pick up on that stuff and being able to easily identify the people walking towards the light instead of walking towards the darkness, that's a skill I'm very, very glad to see growing in myself.

I never wanted to grow a thicker skin; I felt a real sense of pride in my thin skin, and in a weird way, I still do, because it's my thin skin that allows me to empathize with other people. It's the thing that allows me to create vulnerable art. It's the thing that allows me to create other feelings and make songs that actually grab people and touch people. I feel like I've spent my life fighting that thicker skin because I don't want to become an embittered asshole.

The challenge is to just focus on what's actually happening, focus on the people who get it, and focus on the people who are listening.

I do what I want. I try to be nice to everybody. When I fail, I try to apologize.

I've watched so many women, from Kathleen Hanna all the way up to Taylor Swift, whether they're pop artists or rock stars or fine artists or writers, it is the subhistory of female artists that if you're going to make art, you're also going to have a full-time job of defending your right to make art.

I think the thing you're seeing now with the music industry is that the people who have tight-knit communities are now able to really hold each other up because of the internet tools. And the really top-down pyramid scheme of major labels and typical superstars isn't sustainable anymore because the system has collapsed.

I firmly believe in music being as free as possible. Unlocked. Shared and spread. In order for artists to survive and create, their audiences need to step up and directly support them.