As a kid I had gone to New York a handful of times with my family. I definitely think it planted a seed in me.

I'm trying to get to a point where I tell people, if you want to get in touch with me, please don't rely on email. I don't want to be a slave to it.

It's easier for me to remember things based on the releases of albums. The year is such an arbitrary thing.

I feel like there's no one kind of person who comes to my shows. Sometimes I've been surprised by the people who will stop me on the street to tell me that they're into my music.

I don't think teenagers in 2017 identify with heterosexuality, and that's a positive.

I'll probably continue writing songs about New York until I die.

I work on music with different people, and I work on music on my own. That's my life.

Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.

Well, I think that I have a complicated relationship with whiteness because oftentimes, I pass as white, and I recognize that. I would be disingenuous to pretend that I don't pass as white.

I don't believe in expertise. I don't believe that a film critic feels a film more deeply than any person who walks into a theater. I don't believe that.

It's always my mission to try to do something that hasn't been done before, whether that's musically, lyrically or in terms of mixing.

I'm as guilty as anyone else of listening to music track by track.

The whole point of Lady Gaga is that anyone can do it. A few years ago she was a nobody. She talks about how it's important for people to know that by sheer force of will they can bring about anything they want in their lives.

Some of the journalists who've ended up writing about our band - and this is disappointing to say - have a very narrow outlook. And because of that they fundamentally misunderstand us.

Social media is something of a double-edged sword. At its best, social media offers unprecedented opportunities for marginalized people to speak and bring much needed attention to the issues they face. At its worst, social media also offers 'everyone' an unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without reflection.

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.

Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink - all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink.

I love, but I am not entirely sure how to be loved: how to be seen and known for the utterly flawed woman I am. It demands surrender. It demands acknowledging that I am not perfect, but perhaps I deserve affection anyway.

Maybe true love isn't out there for me, but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love is out there for someone.

Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance.

We bear witness to the worst of human brutality, retweet what we have witnessed, and then we move on to the next atrocity. There is always more atrocity.

I recognize that I'm human, and the older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am, how fallible we all are.

As I started to think about how I can claim feminism while also acknowledging my humanity and my imperfections, 'bad feminism' simply seemed like the best answer.

Internet outrage can seem mindless, but it rarely is. To make that assumption is dismissive. There's something beneath the outrage - an unwillingness to be silent in the face of ignorance, hatred or injustice. Outrage may not always be productive, but it is far better than silence.

I try to understand faith and religion. I was raised by wonderful Catholic parents who were deeply faithful and taught us that God is a God of love.

I'm sick of hearing, thinking and talking about Woody Allen. Nonetheless, the allegations against him continue to capture our national attention because so much of the story is strange and sordid.

You can't control the fact that you are born a white man or born into wealth. When people say, 'Check your privilege,' they're saying, 'Acknowledge how these factors helped you move through life.' They're not saying apologize for it.

It would be easy to assume that the open letter is a symptom of the Internet age. Such is not the case. In 1774, Benjamin Franklin wrote an open letter to the prime minister of Great Britain, Lord North - a satirical call for the imposition of martial law in the colonies.

I don't want the whole of my writing or my intellectual energy given over to race because I have diverse interests.

We have cellphones and smartphones and iDevices and laptops and the ability to be perpetually connected. We never have to miss anything, significant or insignificant.

I read too many romance novels during my formative years. I have a penchant for romantic comedies. I understand why 'Romeo and Juliet' came to such a pass.

You cannot reason with people who don't recognize the humanity in all of us.

We all have our vanities. The retouching magazines like 'Vogue' do is the professional version of the retouching we do when we, for example, apply Instagram filters to the pictures we take and share on our social networks.

Social media is something of a double-edged sword. At its best, social media offers unprecedented opportunities for marginalized people to speak and bring much needed attention to the issues they face. At its worst, social media also offers 'everyone' an unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without reflection.

Placing Margaret Sanger on the $20 bill will remind us of what she has done for women and our reproductive health and how the fight for reproductive freedom is an ongoing one.

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.

No one is helped when cultural critics use their voices irresponsibly.

Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink - all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink.

A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology.

I think one of the most important things we can do as feminists is acknowledge that, even though we have womanhood in common, we have to start to think about the ways in which we're different, how those differences affect us, and what kinds of needs we have based on our differences.

What worries me is that 'post-racial' America is not that different from the Americas that have preceded us, and it might not ever be.

I cut an imposing figure. I am large, and I'm tall, and I have tattoos. I am actually really quiet and shy, but maybe people see me, and they don't want to step out of line, or equate disagreement with stepping out of line with a writer they like.

In truth, I don't care about making feminism more accessible to anyone.

There are all kinds of people who continue to be largely ignored by advertisers, whose lives largely go unseen. They deserve their moment.

I love, but I am not entirely sure how to be loved: how to be seen and known for the utterly flawed woman I am. It demands surrender. It demands acknowledging that I am not perfect, but perhaps I deserve affection anyway.

Margaret Sanger didn't just introduce the idea of birth control into our culture at large, she freed women from indenture to their bodies.

I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.

Maybe true love isn't out there for me, but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love is out there for someone.

Public intellectuals are often put in the position of having their words, no matter how off-the-cuff, treated as doctrine.

It's an amusing idea to some, this feminism thing - this audacious notion that women should be able to move through the world as freely, and enjoy the same inalienable rights and bodily autonomy, as men. At least, that's the impression given when feminism and feminists are all too often the targets of lazy humor.