I'm always 20 minutes ahead of myself in my head. But being present - it's beautiful when it happens.

I was a bad student. My teachers gave up trying to teach me how to read music.

I wasn't a hoarder, but I was on my way. I went to thrift stores and never didn't buy something. A lot of cat figurines, needlepoint, afghans. Grandma stuff, I suppose.

I keep making the music I do because I feel very purposeful about making things that would be helpful or quell some loneliness in people. I really needed that when I listened to music growing up and even now, so I don't mind that sense of duty.

My kitchen witch hangs above the sink in my kitchen. Some people think it's specifically so that you don't burn food when you cook, but I like to think that it's warding off evil spirits and bad things in general.

I think it's fun to be superstitious. There's a drama in being superstitious. I'm like that in general. I have friends who don't believe in love or just think it's a chemical thing, and they don't believe in magic. I enjoy believing in all that stuff. It makes things seem more important than they are, like there's more to it.

Our house was cluttered with little charms, thoughtfully placed. There were all kinds of little things going on. Like, my mom made a lampshade out of a picture of our family, but if you look closely, there's a baby Jesus that she cut up and put just above all of us.

I was watching a movie called 'Perfume.' The book is really good, but the movie is really bad. My friend was making fun of it. He kept calling this obese guy a perfume genius. When I started putting my songs up on MySpace, I didn't know what was going to happen. I actually didn't put much thought into a name and just quickly used Perfume Genius.

I don't know if I am a role model, but I've had young kids write to me. I try to write songs that I wish I would have heard when I was younger. It's kind of strange to think of yourself as a role model. That wouldn't be a bad job.

I am a shy person.

I think all gay men are used to people saying no to them, to people not giving them choices.

Hymns have always sounded like sung spells to me. I never felt included in the magic of the God songs I heard growing up - I knew I was going to hell before anyone ever told me that I was. People found comfort in this all-knowing source, but I felt frightened and found out. I developed some weird and very dramatic complexes.

I saw this Facebook video of a boy, probably around seven, wearing a dress he had fashioned from a blanket, sashaying through his house while his mother applauded and cheered him on. He was so proud. It was such a beautiful thing but bittersweet because I knew his spirit would change soon: that he'd become self-aware and ashamed at some level.

I think people come to my music just to feel less lonely.

I don't think art matters as much as keeping people safe.

I've known that people were racist and misogynistic and homophobic since I was very little.

I feel kind of limited and locked into my body and brain - I'm not super into it all the time.

I'm fairly dramatic.

I'm just very self-conscious about the way I look. I really am embarrassed of it, because I wish I wasn't like that.

I've definitely met some people that cultivated a masculinity that they taught themselves. I don't know how they figured out how to do it, but I couldn't.

I have ended up on so many weird Men's Rights Twitter accounts filled with weird anime. I don't know. It's so bizarre to me that people can think that way, and so I feel like I can decode them or figure it out. But you can end up so grossed out.

I don't think I've actually ever had cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. I've had the Steak Diane. I don't like cheesecake!

To me, when something's really funny, there's, like, a wildness to it, and it's very close to the wildness of something potentially tragic or gross. It's all very close to each other when you have that extreme level of feeling.

Usually, like, anyone that would adopt, like, 'masc,' period, to describe them - it's a very phony, stereotypical masculinity.

On the first two albums, I essentially began with lyrics and placed the music underneath or around the words.

Honestly, I just wear what makes me feel good. It becomes political when you leave the house without changing.

Any tragic memory I have I also think is really funny. On any given day, I can think about how horrible something is and also how ridiculous and over-the-top it is.

I felt like an outsider, so listening to a bunch of outsiders' music like Bjork and Patti Smith made me feel better. But at the same time, I didn't have anyone singing specifically 100% about things I could relate to.

I have this idea of myself that I decided when I was 12 about who I am and how I come across and what the world is like. And if I have changed or the world has changed, I don't even notice sometimes because I'm holding on to these old ideas. I am more confident - the music is proof. But I can see the change there much easier than I do as a human.

Everything I do is rebellious. Sometimes even against myself.

I love Twitter.

Loved 'Get Out,' super good from start to finish. I mean, it had everything you'd want in a movie. It was funny, scary, and it wasn't stupid. It was a smart movie but not in a fussy way. It was so good.

I don't dislike 'It' or 'Stranger Things,' but I'm just not as super into it, because, like, I've seen 'E.T.' a lot. And I've watched 'The Goonies.'

I have a really small and strange job history.

Whenever anything 'gay' comes along, everybody wants that thing to somehow be everything to everybody. And usually, it is too gay or not gay enough. There's never the right amount. I think that happens a little bit in the media.

I feel trapped in my body. I want to be like like Scarlett Johansson in 'Lucy,' when she unlocks everything within her - I want to do that. I want to be the alien in 'Arrival' - a spitty, infinite-time-loop creature.

I'm very sensitive - I'll cry during every movie or commercial - but when it comes to my own feelings, I don't really think about them that much unless I'm making music. Otherwise, I'm either checked out or laughing because that's how I do regular stuff. I have a hard time talking about my feelings.

Greatness will come by looking forward - untethered from the politics of the past and anchored by our shared values - and by changing our nation's future.

The Electoral College needs to go, because it's made our society less and less democratic.

I just feel more comfortable with my sleeves rolled up.

As the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, I see on a daily basis the impact of politics and policy on my family, neighbors, friends, and residents.

Systemic racism is something that diminishes all of us. Of course its worst effects are for its victims, but our entire country is held back through the inequality and the mistrust that it creates.

'Freedom' means a lot to conservatives, but they have such a narrow sense of what it means. They think a lot about freedom from - freedom from government, freedom from regulation - and precious little about freedom to. Freedom to is absolutely something that has to be safeguarded by good government, just as it could be impaired by bad government.

I'm not sure anything makes you an outright good person or bad person - that we're all capable of doing good or bad things. And if you want to know how much good you can do, and how much hurt you can do, just ask somebody you love.

The death penalty has been one of many examples where racial discrimination has played out. You can see it in the simple fact that someone convicted of the same crime is more likely to face the death penalty if they are black.

I am not skilled enough or energetic enough to craft a persona. I just have to be who I am and hope people like it.

As a consultant at McKinsey, I learned the value of data and the ability to shape that information into an answer.

My understanding of my faith is that - through a Christian framework - part of what we are called to do is to lay down our own self-interests, after the model of divinity that comes into this world in the form of Christ and lays down his life. And in order to do that, you have to care about something or someone more than yourself.

In local government, it's very clear to your customers - your citizens - whether or not you're delivering. Either that pothole gets filled in, or it doesn't. The results are very much on display, and that creates a very healthy pressure to innovate.

Like anyone who follows politics, I am sometimes mesmerized by the twisted and relentless drama playing out in Washington. But I also know about the price of distraction - the consequences of our attention being diverted from how politics affects daily life.