You have to invest something [in your work]. If you don't risk something that really matters to you - like your integrity, or your pride, or your time, or your security, or your reputation - if you don't risk yourself, you can hear it right away.

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.

And I realized that there's a big difference between deciding to leave and knowing where to go.

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.

The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you chose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many. Jokes could be grandly miscalculated, or stories deemed boring, and I'd learned early on that my sense of humor and ideas about what sorts of things were fascinating didn't exactly overlap with my friends.

Maybe I bring people into that pop world who don't usually find themselves there because there's not enough stuff for them to get excited about otherwise.

Even if I'm sad, dancing is a way to let stuff out.