I love telling stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, and I don't feel bound by being just a singer or an actress. First, I'm a storyteller, and history is stories - the most compelling stories. There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling.

I was writing tons of music in my spare time. I might be on location somewhere, and I'd go home and I'd have my guitar and my little keyboard or something and write music. Or if I was at home, on my piano. I've always been a late bloomer with a lot of things, just in general, so I think this was something that needed to come to fruition in this particular way.

I still have in me the same awareness when I was 12 and chubby and a girl was spitting in my face. I'm the same person.

My sister and I do to what we love to do and do what we want to do, so that sort of started us off having a sense of 'Do this because you love it' not 'Do this because you want to be famous.'

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.

You do not need to look or be anorexic to be successful in Hollywood. The range of what's acceptable is a lot larger than what people believe.