The Pharrell video cut my body and soul in half.

I listened to birds and crickets, looking for the ways that rhythm appears most naturally in the world. I listened to the Smithsonian's field recordings of pygmy choirs from Africa.

I never doubted the music.

The make-up and the costumes were me being scared. I needed to create a boundary between me and the audience. To project this bigger version of myself. Outwardly, it looked good, but inwardly, I began to feel horrible.

This job forces you to ask yourself so many questions: Do you want money? Do you want power? Do you just want to be good at your craft? I don't know what I'm doing. I just want to be happy. But I know I have to keep making music.

I've always had an instrument attached to my body.

I got the craziest crash course in rock n' roll that I could have ever dreamed of.

I think, as a musician, or even as a citizen of the world, I just want to be a part of something or feel connected to something bigger than myself.

People want to see a magical fairytale story, but the reality is that I spent a lot of time making music alone in my bedroom.

You go to school in New York because you want New York and the life that comes with it.

My goal really was to make pop music feel as human as possible.

I titled it 'Alaska' because the song sort of represents everything that happened in my life surrounding a hiking trip I took for a month in Alaska.

I studied abroad my junior year of college.

I've learned that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was.

I always saw myself as this quiet, introspective, thoughtful person.

I didn't actually start playing the banjo until I was in high school.

There are a lot of things worse to be than the 'Pharrell girl.' I hope that'll wear off.

I really want to make a great record, like my 'Rumours' or 'Thriller.'

I kind of always get described as this, like, 'nature girl'... I've lived in New York for the last five years.

The reality of my life is it's about 25 percent music, and everything else I do is so I can get that 40 minutes later to go play. And it is unquestionably worth every second of it.

Music is the most amount of joy or good I can do in the world.

There were a couple of months when I was approaching graduation where I started to think of graduating from college as the afterlife. Because it's this kind of crazy thing that you always know you're going to finish school inevitably, but nobody ever really tells you what happens afterwards.

'Dog Years' is sort of my way of saying goodbye and 'see you soon' to my friends from college.

When someone said, 'Let's go to a club' in New York, it often meant heels and tight dresses and money.

I'm kind of a terrible musician. I'm a very functional musician. I play just about every instrument in a band setting, functionally. But I should not be taking solos.

It's really easy to go viral, but I think it's really hard then to have a career.

I think one of the most important things for creativity is boredom.

I grew up writing songs and producing music, and I studied music production in college.

The reality of the music industry is that I was a 22-year-old college graduate who was able to walk into boardrooms and be the one in charge. It's incredibly empowering. I wasn't ready - I definitely was not ready - but I was prepared as I possibly could have been because I had studied the music industry.

I really wanted to make a record that would feel fun to play live.

I come from such a small place, and I've always really thought that if you make good music, then people will find it.

Music is about connecting with people on a personal level and doing that one set of ears at a time.

When you're super passionate about something, you're more willing to do all of the grunt work. You know, like, I'm so willing to live on a bus for my whole life because that means I get that one moment on stage or that one moment in the studio that totally fills me.

Like most people in college, I just wasn't really sure who I was.

I remember going to church at home on Christmas in 2016, and people wanted to take my photo. When I'm home in Maryland, I don't leave the house. That's a weird feeling.

I don't care much whether people remember me or not. If people remember, well and good. If they don't remember, it's alright - I'm dead anyway.

If you want to be honest with yourself, you have to take criticism, even if you attract adverse comments from others.

I believe that every leader has a right to implement his own policy. But when I see things that are done that are not right - abuse of power, wrong approaches, wrong strategies, making use of foreign consultants, including those discarded by other countries - I feel that I have to have my say.

In my years, I had the opportunity to observe peoples and countries. I see some countries doing well, others failing, and my analysis of things is that whether you fail or succeed is a function of your value system.

If we keep on raking up the past, you can never work with anybody. You will always be fighting against your enemies, and that is bad.

Justice is the most important thing. In a plural society like Malaysia, you cannot have two laws - one law for the Muslim, one law for the non-Muslim.

Independence means we enjoy freedom. We are not colonised by people. And we can govern our own country and develop it independently so that our people can live a better life.

There's no point in treating a currency like a commodity, devaluing it artificially and causing a lot of poverty among poor countries.

The little Napoleons in UMNO try to keep out people who are more intelligent than themselves.

The thinning of the ozone layer is blamed on logging of tropical forests. The fact that the burning of fossil fuels and release of CFCs (chloro-fluoro-carbons) into the atmosphere occur largely in the rich countries are significantly ignored.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom of the press, not even in the most advanced countries in the world. There are things you just don't say, because it will destabilise the environment.

The Jews are not merely hook-nosed but understand money instinctively.

Jews rule the world by proxy.

It is always the right of the mighty which prevails over the weak, and that is very primitive.

I am saying that currency trading is unnecessary, unproductive, and immoral. It should be stopped. It should be made illegal.