If I go see a band, and they play, like, zero from any of their old albums, I'm very happy about that. I do not want to see the bands of my youth playing the songs of my youth. I hate that.

For years, I've written narrators who aren't gender-identified. When I do autobiographical stuff, that's different, obviously. But I've always tried to keep my songs as potentially not a man's thing.

I try not to write songs in which men glamorize their own need for approval from women. That's kinda a bogus way to go out. But I try to do this quietly. I'm not about to go around telling people how they should or shouldn't think. My feminism is for me.

I've written a lot about southern California, but I don't use the same characters. Leave the people in the songs in the songs, is my philosophy.

I believe in God, but in my own unconventional way. We're not affiliated with any organisation, and I have no religious education of any kind, but I definitely have my own kind of ideas about it.

When I grew up in Cincinnati in 1974, the Board of Education set up the performing school, similar to the New York performing arts school, and it was in walking distance from my school.

The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner tragedies is not education or exposure. It's the gospel.

When I took admission in a medical college, I found that apart from the lack of education, what stopped girls from menstrual management was a limited access to sanitary pads.