I get to live down my reputation for being cantankerous if I slowly evolve towards being a really good live show.

At 35, I'm thinking, Oh, I don't have any of that initial inspiration that I had before, all that angst. I always thought I would burn out very quickly.

I knew what I wanted to do, which was to become a recording artist, so I definitely felt like I had a calling. The performing part was the part that I wasn't sure about.

There's always room for improvement. I'm always focused on the results, and those are the precise things that I don't really experience as a part of the performance.

As soon as you start to think of that thing that you want to convey or say, you can always just say it much better than you can actually rhyme it or stuff it into a song. It's very, very difficult to just kind of get your point across without going the back way. And you have to be good at that, to not think about things so hard. Let the pen take over, so that it's somebody else's job to dissect the lyrics and tell you what you're all about.

I still have a very nonintellectual, nonjudgmental relationship with melody and the music as I hear it all in my head.

I had my gothy phase, but I was never a troublemaker or anything like that.