Not to name names, but a lot of pop female artists you see, they don't write their own songs. Lot of top male artists and boy band artists, they don't write their own songs. They're just a product. They sell, they sell, they sell. They don't care about musical integrity, any of that kind of stuff.

One of my first memories is marching with my mom. I was in kindergarten with with the Catholic ladies when Martin Luther King Jr. got shot. We wore the black armbands and marched downtown.

I find in my career that I never know what's going to happen in two months.

People in Seattle - and I'm speaking from experience - are indoors more. It used to just rain a ton, and as a result, you'd be inside listening to music all the time and playing. You'd all rehearse at each other's houses and share ideas. There was no competition. When I got to L.A., I was really stunned by the competition.

The most real thing of all, the only thing any of us wants, is to matter to somebody. To feel and share love, even on a friendship level or as deep as a romantic one. Who doesn't want that?

It's quite difficult to write about female friendship without it seeming to be a very niche subject. It's a difficult balance.

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.

If you're fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and you're a Jew, you don't think so much about relationships. People didn't have a lot of divorces during the Holocaust, for instance.