I would read the Shel Silverstein poems, Dr. Seuss, and I noticed early on that poetry was something that just stuck in my head and I was replaying those rhymes and try to think of my own. In English, the only thing I wanted to do was poetry and all the other kids were like, "Oh, man. We have to write poems again?" and I would have a three-page long poem. I won a national poetry contest when I was in fourth grade for a poem called "Monster In My Closet.

Wasn't it beautiful when you believed in everything?

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It's a natural process.

Live your life like you're 80 looking back on your teenager years. You know if your dad calls you at eight in the morning and asks if you want to go out for breakfast. As a teenager you're like no, I want to sleep. But as an eighty year old looking back you have that breakfast with your dad. It just little things like that, that helped me when I was a teenager in terms of making choices you won't regret.

It's so much easier to like people, and to let people in, to trust them until they prove that you should do otherwise. The alternative is being an iceberg.

The haters just got to hate so just shake it of.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you're obsessed with yourself, and I'm not - you can become unhinged so easily.