You can laugh when I talk, but not when I sing.

With fame, I'm able to create more. With every success, you have more freedom to create.

I wanted to make the album I always needed to make. I had to say the things I never could.

I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.

Everyone's gotta have a voice, to be able to speak out. Left supresses right, right supresses left, and what's left and what's right? You know? It's America. You gotta be able to speak out. That's why people came here from all over the world: to have a fair shake. Not more than somebody else - the same.

I have a hard time doing anything someone else tells me to do! I've always been driven to follow my own path and not be pushed down another lane because some executive thought I could be more commercially successful or whatever.

I don't know many people who don't have somebody in their family who's a part of the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community. It's not like they're aliens or outsiders. This is family.