[In making music] it's nice to not have a goal, to not have a set format. It's very liberating to just get out of your comfort zone and be in a new space.

It was about being able to dance like Cassidy did, as though no one was watching, as though the moment was infinite enough without needing to document its existence.

Prince is king to me. As this half-naked, short black guy who looked like a girl in the 70s and 80s, he was talking about women in a way that was very unusual because he didn't objectify them.

Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that's all. I don't know if he's right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.

My parents had an independent theater company here in Sweden during the 1980s, so I was raised watching my parents create independently, having a lot of fun and just doing what they wanted to do. I think that idea of independence as an artist was something I was always used to. And then I entered the industry from a very commercial perspective, and things were very different then from what I grew up with.

I always felt like I could combine good pop songs that are easy for people to like with a real person and a real mind and integrity.