I remember seeing an interview from the Bee Gees and they were like, 'The biggest competition to the Bee Gees is the Bee Gees.' They just kept trying to top themselves and write better songs, and I'm just always trying to do that.

It's all about the art, really, at the end of the day.

I feel like I'm always just trying to write better music and keep topping myself.

I never pictured myself as a professional musician.

I always like surprising people and doing things at a young age and, I don't know, trying to do them at a higher caliber than what you'd normally think. I'm not saying I'm a virtuoso, but I always challenge myself.

When I first moved to L.A., I lived in the Hills in kind of a wooded area that was just really chill.

My music diet growing up was lots of sugar. Lots of retro-pop sugar. Motown, disco. A lot of English rock, like the Turtles, the Zombies, Bowie and stuff like that.

Songwriting itself, I don't think you can really teach that.

I like a lot of older, '60s or '70s-style songwriting.

The music scene in Michigan is really folky and bluegrass, but my parents played a lot of disco. They really liked to dance.

When I was growing up, there were a few musicians who would have regular gigs at restaurants, and I always thought it was so cool and unexpected how they would spontaneously perform. Being the ambitious kid that I was, I got into it and really studied it. I was so inspired by it.

A lot of people think I'm a chick. It happens the most at airports. The flight attendants will always say, 'Have a nice flight, Ms. Borns.' It must be the hair.

I find inspiration from a lot of different texts and really old stories and folk tales - things I feel like no one else is reading.

The Internet is a crazy archive of a lot of old everything. Paintings, drawings, old, new, and everything in between.

Performing is an exchange of a lot of energy and it can wipe you out.

A lot of people hear things on the radio and try to make their own version of that.

I really like small, intimate shows, but there's nothing like playing at a festival. It's a completely different experience. Everyone is just a little more primal; they can get away with more things.

I have a few friends who are amazing stylists, so I owe them a lot.

I always go thrift shopping wherever I am.

My first CD started as a studio project and I record everything with one other guy, so I didn't have a band. That's kind of how I like to do it, though. I like to create it with one other person, this guy, Tommy English, who produces everything. And then I go out on the road with a band who interprets it live.

A magic show and a concert are very similar in the way I like keeping things a mystery and not doing them the same way every time. The listener and the audience never know what's going to happen next.

I don't like washing away your body's natural oils and pheromones. Those are good. You have to keep those.

I don't wash my hair that often, to be honest.

I like to put coconut oil in my hair if it's looking dry. It's so unruly. It has a mind of its own.

I'm fascinated by the yin and yang of everything.

I grew up with a big backyard that led to the sand dunes of Lake Michigan.

I did a lot of magic shows growing up. My dad is a graphic designer so he helped me brand myself and create a logo. So I was just rollin' with the magician crowd for a while. But I was really young, 10 to 13, doing table magic and balloon animals at this Italian restaurant.

Anything that makes life more of a dance party I'm very much okay with.

I've gotten to play some cool venues, like at an aquarium in La Jolla, California.

I'm always trying to top the last show.

I really like intimate venues because it feels like everyone in the audience is in on all our inside jokes.

Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can't look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It's human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don't. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.

The more you practice something, the more you are aware of what you're doing.

I don't really know what emotions are going to come out in songs when I'm writing them until I step back and listen to them as a whole.

Hopefully I inspire people just to lose themselves a little bit. That's what I enjoy doing on stage: challenging myself with a new territory, like performing differently, moving differently, singing differently, just let people know that it's okay just to do something that they've never done before.

My mom's really into astrology and she's always telling me about the moon cycles and stuff like that.

I just love catchy melodies.

I look at performance clothes as setting the mood for the whole show.

I can do anything. In GQ, I appeared as a man.

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.

A lot of people felt I was getting work because I was Boy George. My response at the time was that there's a lot of DJs making records, they're not all making good records, but they have the right to do that.

A lot of what I've been learning in the last two years is due to therapy - about my sexuality, why things go wrong, why relationships haven't worked. It isn't anything to do with anybody else; it's to do with me.

Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.

I also tried to avoid doing obvious dance records.

I just go in my back garden. It's the only place where people don't come and bother you.

I knew style and content went hand in hand.

I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go - the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous.

I suppose there is a lot of toughness in me.

I think people could be a bit friendlier. The only real contact you have with people is when they're annoyed if you've had a party - you know, it's been a bit too noisy for them or something.