Singers, musicians, and songwriters don't want to use the word "acting" because we want it to be more real than that - we want it to come from us: naturally, truly, really.

My daughter could do and be anything, without having to fight to get through the glass ceiling. Without having it be so extraordinary. If my daughter went to produce a soundtrack for a movie, there would be nothing extraordinary about a girl doing it. When I did it, it was highly unusual.

When I was sixteen, I began to think outside the box of my small town. Not that the people in my small town are in a box - they're not! There's a brilliant college there, and I had brilliant teachers from that college. But in terms of a conservative upbringing, which I did have within my own family, I just began to question things and to think for myself.

To me, the housewife who puts her teacups unwashed in the sink because her husband won't wash them, is political. Every act is political: the things you do, as well as the things you omit doing; the things you refuse to do; the things you fail to do; the things you say, as well as the things you don't say.

Things are changing. They need to change more. It should not be of any note that a woman does something, because women do everything.

By the time I was about ten, I had started to lose faith with church ways. I was educated in some ways by my high school government and history teachers.

I do use reality because I want my work to feel real, I want it to feel heartfelt. I don't want to make it up and have it sound corny or unrelatable.