You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.

People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist.

I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.

During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.

Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.

And my voice now is a struggle, it's a daily struggle to keep it up. Gravity has begun to fight the vocal cords the way it does with everybody. So I have a vocal therapist, and we record the sessions and I use them on tour every day.

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.