Growing up, I played in different bands and did a lot of self-booked touring and traveling around, and my sister was driving us on tour, and we're playing for nobody and literally begging my friends that I went to high school with to buy tickets to our shows.

I just think that any person who wants music to be their career shouldn't focus on a record label. I have seen friends who sign to a label too early in their career, and they lost control over their music, and their releases were delayed or never put out.

One of my favorite cities is Tokyo because of sushi, and Asian food in general, but then also the way Tokyo operates, because it's so clean, and there's space for a lot of variety of stores.

I've been through so many different phases, partly because I moved around so much. I never found my identity based on where I was from. It was always pick up and explore something else.

The main thing for me is that anything I design, I try to design it with just a little bit of pizzazz, something that's going to allow the family to stay home and enjoy the space as opposed to necessarily having to always go to a park or something.

I'm aware of what kids like because I'm constantly in touch with them. Also, they say that a lot of people who write for children can remember their own childhoods vividly and I can remember my childhood very vividly.

I will tell them that you can work hard, you can improve your life and the lives of your children in one day when you deliver your youngest child to the university, you will look her in the eye and say, 'You will give back.'

My mom's father came from a family of 11 children who came over from the island of Ischia, Italy, and settled in Providence, RI. Her mother was part of the large community of French-speaking Canadians who settled in Woonsocket, RI.