You can't know if someone's really your best friend. I think the measure of that is you could not see each other for six months and then when you see each other you laugh the same way you did when you were a little kid.

There's nothing like having a great friends when you see them, you get that joy - that you can't really compare it with anything else.

I feel like making music because - and this has much to do with the way I was able to make this record - there's more of myself in it.

Everyone has the heartbreak that shapes them in a way that they could never go back to the innocence that they had before.

In making a record there are so fewer people involved - at least in our case. There were no more than three or four people in the studio at once. So I really feel like I can stand by everything on the record and say this is something that I personally endorse.

If you're in the public eye and you have young girls who look up to what you do, they're going to look to you for certain cues, so you have to take that as a responsibility, whether you think you deserve it or not.

I don't know why femininity should be associated with weakness. Women should be free to express who they are without thinking, 'I need to act like a man, or I need to tone it down to be successful.' That's a very good way to keep women down.