It's important to say that it's not just men that can be man-children. Women can be grown-up women and still have the playfulness of people who are younger.

I know sometimes my Twitter feed is intense, but I take it as a friendly void to scream into. I don't have another way to be.

I've always wanted to play a normal woman, and I think I have been offered these parts where I play a kook because I'm not the idea of what a normal woman is.

I spend so much time hoping things for myself.

I don't always feel comfortable being outwardly aggressive.

You don't have to be in the brightest, shiniest state of being an individual to feel like you're exceptional.

It takes a while to realize that just because you're a stand-up comedian and you do comedy, you're not going to be good at all comedy.

I tend to watch things that aren't really the genre of my own work.

I learned my lesson early in my career that it's not helpful to go and look at what other people's opinions are.

We love rom-coms, but it's getting to where we don't identify with any of the women in them.

I loved pretending to be a middle-aged Jewish woman. I just wanted to do what I saw Gilda Radner and Carol Burnett doing. But I'm not a particularly good impressionist. It was never my strong suit.

I think, in general, finding the right time to have a baby is pretty scary.

I do think that character types trend. As a female comedian, the parts that come my way are often terrible women.

Don't use a pick-up line.

I feel a lot of life in me and a lot of creative energy, and I think it's better suited somewhere it can run free.

My grandfather was a lot like a white Jewish George Jefferson, and he did not enjoy my work very much.

I always wanted to be a children's author, and I have a really big library of children's books. All the ones from when I was little, they are just so beautiful. I read kids' books, and they calm me down.

You don't realize it until you go out and take a look, but there are so many ways in which sexism is just allowed in our culture, not just in the entertainment industry. It's just allowed to be there, and that's not acceptable anymore. And I think it's really important to be very vocal.

Sometimes you have to burn yourself to the ground before you can rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

When you're writing about difficult things and darker issues, it's nice to offer some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. Some sense of hope. Sometimes, the best way to do that is by offering it in the music, so that you can dance your way out of the darkness.

I don't like irony and sarcasm very much. But I do like it when you think someone is telling you a joke, and then you discover it's serious.

I think, in a world of mouths, I want to be an ear.

I have mood swings, but I'm sure people in England have that, too. Me and my friends, we're just a bunch of happy idiots.

I love playing small towns, but in Sweden, it's sometimes a little bit weird, because all small towns are just so close to bigger cities that people are not as grateful when you show up as they are in Odessa, Texas.

What I can't fit into my suitcase is probably something I don't need.

If there's two things I will never do, it would be grow a beard and pick up the uke again.

Nirvana was a band that led you somewhere, as opposed to all the grunge bands that began and ended with themselves.

Really, to me, a really good evening would be a comedian, followed by a band, followed by a really good DJ.

I think that's a responsibility I have, to not leave the listener with complete dread or depressing, dark thoughts, but to leave a little door open so that you can dance your way out if you want to.

I had a drummer in my band who started teaching me tricks to come up with interesting rhythms. Because I don't come from a musical background, I've never studied music, and I don't know music theory at all, so a lot of stuff I discover on my own are things students would learn in the first grade of music.

I think a lot of my anxieties and fears are things that are very abstract.

When it comes to heartbreaks and disappointments, I often have to be more or less done with them to be able to write about them. Then you might ask why I would write about them at all, but I think I owe it to the Jens of the past.

The idea of printing out something that's as scary as a tumor into its concrete form was something that spoke to me - there is something very liberating about that idea.

'Postcards' was just a way of slapping myself in the face and saying, 'You can do anything! Just go for it!'

One of the nice things about songwriting is you can be inspired by absolutely anything.

I don't want music to be a museum.

When I was a kid, I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year. I refused to step out of the door because I thought something would happen. I had all these compulsive thoughts or whatever, and my head was really messed up.

I think South Korea was one of the best shows I've ever done in my whole life. The people there were crazy. It was literally Beatlemania.

My old songs used to take place in Gothenburg; then, when I lived in Melbourne, the songs just naturally took place more in Melbourne.

Of the times that I've been able to overcome a fear, it's been by making it something that I can understand, that I can hold on to - just something that's more tangible.

Summer is always best through a window.

I wanted to write songs about other people because I was sick of myself, basically. I didn't like myself very much. 'Ghostwriting' became an outlet for that. And then I could get back to get Jens Lekman again.

Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.

I think there are definitely a lot of subjects I don't share with people, but I'm not sure where that border is.

I think sometimes when I sit down to write a song, it doesn't come out naturally, but when you are writing an email to someone, especially if you are writing to a stranger, you write much more spontaneously, and it's freer.

I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.

A lot of people would write to me long stories from their lives, and I felt they were thinking of me as some sort of treasure chest to keep their secrets. I felt like sometimes they would tell me stories they wouldn't tell anybody else in the whole world. And I loved these stories.

I really do believe in clearing samples, and I believe that people should be compensated for them, but the laws are just so stupid.

It was never part of how I imagined my music, and I watched in awe at how this ukulele troubadour image suddenly devoured the Jens Lekman I had planned so carefully.

I feel like it's my responsibility not to leave the listener in a pool of dread.