The period of time between when you're done with a record and when you start touring is the worst period of a time in a musician's life.

Maybe you don't know who a person is just based on the way they dress. I know that's a really simple thing you're supposed to be taught really young, but sometimes you can forget.

I've been keeping tour journals since I was 17 years old.

I had some real health complications with my HRT - hormone replacement therapy.

That's one of the biggest fears a lot of trans people have if they decide to come out, that they're making themselves unlovable and that they'll never have a relationship again.

I dealt with depression for my whole life. That's not something that was caused by being trans.

I want to be an involved parent in my daughter's life and do the things that other parents do, like go to the PTA meetings.

Saying to someone 'I'm a transsexual' is the most empowering thing I've ever felt in my whole life.

As an artist, you're just observing the world around you. So much is overwhelming and it's all so inescapable that it can't all speak to general cultural statements.

I guess I've been existing in my own head a lot.

I guess I get a little impatient and frustrated when people ask what 'Manic Depression' is about.

When I'm on tour, people see me in one way, but in normal life I doubt people even recognize me.

A lot of what keeps me going is wanting to be better, thinking I'm not good enough.

Most people I know stopped talking to me after I came out.

Every artist has the song where they say, 'I wish I could have written a song as good as this,' but they don't feel like they've done it yet. It pushes you to evolve.

The first record we made, we recorded and mixed in a day. The second record was recorded and mixed in a week. The third was recorded and mixed in a month, and 'New Wave' was mixed and recorded in six months. It was an epic project.

In a perfect world, in my opinion, 'they,' 'them,' and 'theirs' would be the pronouns that everyone would use.

I want to write songs, and I would like to play and sing them. I'm not a politician; I'm not a comedian. I hate coming up with bits to do between songs.

For most people who are transitioning, surgery isn't really a financial reality. So to place these goals of 'in order to be happy with my body, I must do this thing' is really damaging to yourself.

Manic depression in general is something that runs in my family, and it's something that I battle with.

I think the hardest part for musicians is what a wide gulf of time there is between when you decide to sober up and when you have the ability to navigate being social and having relationships and being in a band and having friends while sober.

I've gotten to do some really amazing things, gone to some really amazing places, and just have some really unique experiences. And if I have one regret looking back it's that - not a regret even, because I think that's kind of labeling depression as something you can control - but I just wish I would have been able to enjoy it more fully.

I have gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia. I don't like to see pictures of myself.

My least favorite thing about being in a band is photo shoots and video shoots. I like writing songs.

I sleep with a notebook next to me, and most nights I sleep with my guitar next to me.

To know that the people who are singing along at your show actually have something in common with you and can identify with what you've gone through, makes the songs that much more meaningful to sing.

My whole identity is not gender. My whole identity is not talking about gender. There are so many other things in my life that are fulfilling that I like to think about too.

Trans people should be able to fall in love and sing love songs too, and have that be just as valid. You turn on the radio and every other song is some guy singing about some girl who broke his heart, or vice versa. And there's not a lot of trans representation with that.

I was married for like seven, eight years. And then coming out of that I was like, 'Okay, now what? I guess I would like to date? That's a reasonable thing. I'm allowed to have that!'

If you look at the difference between the first Clash record and 'Combat Rock,' what an evolution.

It's not like I came out in 'Rolling Stone' and all of a sudden I had a closet full of all the clothes I want.

Two Coffins' is a song I wrote for my daughter.

What people don't realize when they talk about our lineup changes is that the original Against Me! broke up in 2001. It never recorded a full-length record.

Living in Italy meant growing up without MTV.

I just always knew that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a musician. I never had any doubts.

At 20, I was married, working as an auto mechanic, and living in Gainesville. I was doing Against Me!, but it wasn't by any means a full-time gig.

My father was stationed in Italy in the military. I had no one to feed me what was cool, so I was into Guns N' Roses and New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer and a lot of '80s hair bands. But I was never into Motley Crue, they never stuck with me.

At 8, I got my first cassette, which was Def Leppard's 'Hysteria.'

I moved to Naples, Florida, and by 15 I was into punk: Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, Operation Ivy. Along with the classic punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat - all those bands that you get into when you're first getting into punk.

America loves a good comeback story!

I once took a workshop with Jim Shepard, and he has this term, 'rate-of-revelation,' that has come to mean a lot to me: 'the pace at which we're learning crucial emotional information about the stories' central figures.' An ever-increasing rate-of-revelation is good; a stagnant r-of-r is not.

Publishing at a young age is not really an indicator of talent.

Here's something a little more personal: In my teens, I was having a hard time and ended up in a therapy group of young women, some of whom had endured terrible childhood traumas.

Unlike a novel, where you expect a different kind of arc that leaves us with a somber sense of resolution, I think a story in some ways as like a train window: being able to watch the landscape pass for a certain amount of time. And then your stop arrives, and you have to leave.

My students are often asking me, 'What do you think are the most important qualities for a writer?' And one thing I always tells them is that it's helpful to be willing to sit in a space of uncertainty. There are entire years, especially with novels, where you really don't know where the project is going.

I realized that, for me, travel for work - I'm not speaking so much about travel for pleasure - had actually become a way of avoiding life.

I think my concern is I know my voice, and I know the kinds of landscapes that interest me, so my primary concern is doing the most I can with those voices and those landscapes.

I've always found the Write-What-You-Know axiom small and stifling.

I wager we have a vast amount of literature out there that tends to the stories of men, so I've never really worried too much about attending to stories of women.

In August 2008, I moved with the man who would become my husband from Boston to a cabin in rural North Carolina.