I said to my teacher, 'I can't be a singer because I'm not pretty enough, and I'm fat.' And she looked at me and said, 'Tell that to Nell Carter, babe.' That changed my life forever!

Why wear pants when you can wear a muumuu?

For me the greatest revenge of all is having a happy adulthood, waking up in my gorgeous turquoise bedroom in the morning beside a person who really inspires me. That's the best revenge a girl-loving-girl from the Bible belt could possibly have. And, importantly, it's healthy.

I grew up with the motto of "they can't kill you and eat you," and I still think that's right. You sure as hell can't! When it comes to speaking about my body makes other people uncomfortable but it doesn't make me uncomfortable. It makes them think more about themselves than it makes them judge me. I've always had this body and had to live with it. I've never been a little thing. I've been smaller but I've never been small, even as a baby. I've never had that window into that kind of world where people only talk to you because you're conventionally sexy.

I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter - I just didn't identify as a songwriter at all.

I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.

I support love any healthy way you can get it.