My problem was that I felt ashamed of feeling sad or angry. Now, I don't hide my vulnerability in my lyrics. There's no way I was going to get raped and not get something out of it. I learned about power and hope and forgiveness. I like who I am now and I wouldn't be who I am if that hadn't happened.

But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism.

Everything that happens to me, I experience it really intensely. I feel it very deeply.

I wanted to write a happy song. I didn't know how.

I was never somebody who grew up going, 'I really want to be a singer in a band,' and I never had any ambition toward anything, really.

I had really bad obsessive-compulsive disorder. At its worst, I was compelled to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning and go out in the alley because I just knew that the paper-towel roll I threw in the recycling bin was uncomfortable, like it was lying the wrong way, and I would be down in the garbage.

I let the beast in too soon I don't know how to live without his hand on my throat. I fight him always and still. Oh, darling it's so sweet. You think you know how crazy, how crazy I am.