I was never somebody who grew up going, ‘I really want to be a singer in a band,’ and I never had any ambition toward anything, really.

The age thing really bugs me. Do people have more of a right to not like what I say because I’m 19?

I was freaked out about it, … I felt guilty; I felt really moved that people cared about me that much, but I’m still kind of paralyzed because I can’t do it the way I...

The way I feel about music is that there is no right and wrong. Only true and false.

But I honestly don’t read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can’t hear them. If you give...

I’ve never been to the websites. It’s a lot healthier for me to keep out of the conversations about me.

I’m a really good parent to myself sometimes, and I do things that make me learn and grow.

There were songs I would write about breaking up with somebody before I broke up with them, months and months before I broke up with them.

[During her sabbatical, she said, she would often sit in her backyard in Venice, Calif., thinking and playing with pine cones.] I was making little pine-cone people with razor blades, … That’s all I did.

I got all my work done to graduate in two months and then they were like, I’m sorry, you have to take driver’s ed. I just kind of went, Oh, forget it.

I was so self-critical. I still am, but it’s not as bad anymore.

The quick success was a bit strange to get used to.

It makes me panic inside to think that I’m not going to be able to remember my own songs and the work that it’s going to take to learn them again.