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

If I were a guy, it would be, you know, just a different set of problems I have to carry along.

I remember being a teenager and being really impressed by "let's sit around and b*tch" people, and I have so little time for those people nowadays.

What I have found is, so much of that is like a Chinese finger trap: the more you play to the dark, the more you will get trapped in the dark, and if you just play to the light and focus on the people that don't misunderstand you and focus on the audience that does celebrate you and focus on the people who aren't trying to tear you down, all that other stuff eventually erases itself because it has nothing to feed on.

Every album is just a greatest hits of whatever songs are on a pile when I go in to make a record.

There are so many people, so many artists, so many magazines, so many theater companies, so many people trying to raise money for so many things that it's easy to look around and just feel powerless or helpless, because even if you have some resources, you can't help everybody.

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.