Part of being in a band, being a painter, or starting a nonprofit is that you're going to make horrible mistakes and look like a total idiot, but you're never going to create that thing that really connects with people if you don't fail over and over and over again.

I'm living in a world where there are LGBTQ straight alliances at high schools. I feel pretty psyched on that.

What (some) bands do is go, 'It's not important that I'm a girl, it's just important that I want to rock.' And that's cool. But that's more of an assimilationist thing. It's like they just want to be allowed to join the world as it is; whereas I'm more into revolution and radicalism and changing the whole structure. What I'm into is making the world different for me to live in.

I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.

I don't think I've ever had a woman yell that at me, but women have yelled mean things at me as well.

I think that it's so powerful for me to go see someone like Bridget Everett at Joe's Pub and watch her weave her songs in and out of these funny, tragic stories - you can talk and sing and it's not this horrible offense, you're going to get thrown in artistic jail.

Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes.