I know what my job is: I write the songs, I sing them, I play them on the piano.
Just tolerate my little fist tugging on your forest chest.
My whole life, people have been saying, Why are you so angry?
The quick success was a bit strange to get used to.
I like the idea of the idler wheel – it just sits in between things, but it makes such a big difference in the way that the machine is working. That concept has always been something that has interested me, but I didn’t really know why.
No matter how well prepared you are in life, you’re gonna fall down a hole, and if you can fix the frayed ends of things, then you’re better off.
Most of the time you need something to fight against. If something is bothering me, then the only way to get past it is to work through it.
Categories are gibberish to me. I understand – it helps people organize their thoughts. But you can’t go too far with it.
The worst pain in the world is shame.
I want to be able to do whatever I feel like doing and not worry about anything. Even when I was a kid, the only contemporary artist I listened to was Cyndi Lauper.
Nobody is strong enough to not be influenced.
I spend a lot of time trying to not do anything bad to anyone, but you can’t live your life and not hurt people.
I realized I was trying to be friends with somebody who I used to be with but who I didn’t get along with. I’m really big on that. I need to be friends with everyone that I’ve ever had a relationship with.
I have never bought myself a computer or a phone, but guys in my life have bought them for me, for whatever reason. So now I have them.
I didn’t want to be precious about things. Of course, the idea is to make great music, but if you have great musicians up there, it gives me some leeway to play around a little bit.
I don’t mind making a fool of myself. I felt like people would be accepting of that because, to me, that seems like an interesting way to do a show. I’ve always thought that it’s interesting to watch people work things out on stage.
My career has been: first you have to prove yourself, then there’s the sophomore record, then there’s this thing and that thing, and you always want to be understood.
I used to love to make things – you couldn’t drag me away for dinner because I was always writing a story or something.
Do they think I’m on drugs? That I have a life-threatening illness? That I’m anorexic? Emotionally, it doesn’t get easier to hear those criticisms – but it gets easier to be resolute about my reaction to it.
When I was a kid – 10, 11, 12, 13 – the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody. And back then, a thought would go through my head almost constantly: “There’s never gonna be a room someplace where there’s a group of people sitting around, having fun, hanging out, where one of them goes, ‘You know what would be great? We should call Fiona. Yeah, that would be good.’ That’ll never happen. There’s nothing interesting about me.” I just felt like I was a sad little boring thing.
I’m so tired of trying to say things to people and having them not listen. That’s probably the reason why a lot of people think that I’m either depressed or sullen or shy because I just simply will not talk to you unless that I think that you’re listening to me. I just simply won’t. I can’t.