I started to write before I went to SUNY Purchase music conservatory. As an audition I submitted what I now think are really awful songs, but I guess they saw something in them.

When I walk through the city, I just think that I see my family. I see us in everybody, you know? I see us.

I have the coolest parents.

It's a privilege to work with an artist that you really care for.

Love is the answer to a question that I have forgotten

You make something, and you really have fun with it, and you try to put emotion in it, and at the end of the day, you have no idea how the tide is going to fall. You don't know if everyone's going to like it, if everyone's going to hate it, if it's going to be like you're a media darling, or all of a sudden you're a sellout. You have no idea.

You're part of the human fabric of experience. You don't have to have cancer to write about cancer. You don't have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum. As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didn't. Gogol didn't. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Our own selves are limitless. And our capacity for empathy is giant.