As a new artist there's always outside influences trying to tell you how to make a song better for radio and how to do your hair.

My school life was very much a wandering experience. I was having trouble in school and I was not making a lot of friends. So coming home and actually improvising on the piano and just coming up with melodies was an escape for me.

I did not practice hours a day for eighteen years to have my success attributed to a myth.

No matter who we are, no matter what our circumstances, our feelings and emotions are universal.

I think some industries are so far behind the rest of humanity, in the way they see characters and cast shows. Once those walls get broken down, it changes everything.

Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music.

When you're walking in, basically like a kid a candy store, to a project where there's an endless canon of material, you have to step back from it as a self-indulgence. You have to look at it neutrally.