When I watch alien movies, I want to be the alien. I don't want to be the people that make first contact or anything; I just want to be that creature.
Perfume Genius
When something is heartwarming and triumphant, and not corny or preachy, it's such a powerful thing.
I realise there are situations where I camp it up, make myself into a sort of novelty character to ease things along. Like, if I ever feel uncomfortable in a situation, I can just make myself into this funny Will-and-Grace-guest-star type of person, and maybe people will not pay attention to the deeper things going on.
The thing is everything is good at the Cheesecake Factory. Everything's good. It's science-based. It's a formula; there's math. It's all good!
When I started to allow myself to not be locked into wearing men's clothes, things kind of opened up. It feels very kind to drape yourself in something that feels special.
I don't feel like I make sense in the world. I don't feel like I look right. I don't feel like I act right or do right. It's very frustrating to me that I just walk around with this all the time.
I'm just doing what I want. I'm not thinking, like, 'Today I'm going to dress like a woman.' I'm not even thinking about that. I'm just thinking, 'I want to wear this today; I want to be this today.'
It took me a long time to not think of the universe as a judgmental debit-credit system. I haven't completely shaken it, but I no longer think that I am overdrawn with God. Grace is not something you earn; its always there. I find this idea a lot more fun.
I'm really into gay stuff getting funded: having it be on TV and having a show.
If I drink coffee, I have to turn the lights off and lay down. I can't handle it.
Taking care of myself is not instinctual for me. It feels very weird.
My mom is not religious, but she's a very spiritual, magical kind of lady. One time, when I was younger, my mom said she was a witch and that my grandmother was also a witch. It was late at night, and she was really sleepy, but I took it very seriously because I always wanted to go to Hogwarts.
I get in my own way a lot. I feel a lot more confident than I... am.
I think people have a hard time dealing with a bunch of things at once. They can't have something be disturbing and funny at the same time. They can't have that kind of combination. Which is weird to me because I feel complicated about most things.
I like Yoda. I like the Ewoks.
I play a lot of role-playing games on the computer. And I always have.
I like when I tweet about Tony Hawk. A lot of times, people think it's true; like, I've tweeted about having lunch with him a lot, and people are like, 'Oh, how was he?' or, like, 'Do you have a pic?' I don't know how to explain it. He's right at the level where people could almost believe it, but it's also a really weird pairing.
I feel like I've figured out the way that I can talk about things that are important to me and have my music and the way of performance be healing and be helpful.
I started writing songs later in life because I just couldn't commit to it before.
It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.
I'm pretty sure I would have managed to over-share no matter what time period I was born in. It's a family thing, too.
I think if you know one direction, then you can feel the other one. I don't think you can be truly, insanely joyous if you haven't ever felt the flip side of it.
There was one time I flagged every 'Brokeback Mountain' review on Netflix that was negative. I was, like, 'not helpful,' and I spent, like, an hour doing it, and I wrote a really serious review about it. It's hard for me not to get really sensitive. I don't brush things off like that very easily.
Music helped me, growing up: it very much felt like a companion and made me less lonely.
For a while, I thought I would maybe be a writer. But with music, I was such a nerd; I was really obsessive about it. The problem was I couldn't really sing. I think one day I sang from a different part of my body, from my gut for the first time, and I was like, 'Oh! That's how you're supposed to do it.'
My favorite movie is 'Dogfight' with River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. The ending is kind of bittersweet but so real and moving and complicated.
I've had people send messages that said, 'I'm sorry how I treated you in high school.' It was just through kindness. I still think of the world the same way I did growing up. When I got hurt, I decided that this is how people are. But the world is changing, and even those people have changed. And I have. I need to let go, too.
I was really scared of the devil growing up: I was convinced I was going to be possessed.
I don't ever necessarily feel masculine or feminine. I just feel... I don't know. Like, when I'm wearing women's clothes, it's not like I'm dressing like a lady, a woman; it's just like I'm doing whatever I want.
I think the best mood for writing is a heavy feeling that's a little bit removed from you. Sometimes I feel very self-indulgent and bratty and ungrateful, and no good music comes out of that. But sometimes I can be really sad or have an excess of feeling yet somehow be able to see the big picture more.
I was scared of the devil starting around age nine. Before that, I was gathering every family member in the living room, slipping a shirt over my robe so the bottom hung like a skirt and performing Gloria Estefan songs with feverish intensity.
Blushes are fun. I like to do circles - like a Caravaggio painting almost, or Victorian looking.
I sort of trust myself as a musician to experiment more and to know when things are more effective when they're spare and when a song can hold up to a lot of different instrumentations. So I'm more willing to go for it.
There's a book called 'You're Not a Stranger Here' by Adam Haslett - short stories, a lot of them are about mental illness and gay people - that classic combination. But they're really well-written, really powerful. It's pretty good.
I saw 'Predators.' That was pretty good, actually.
iTunes is my favorite record store.
I think people are surprised that I'm not - I think people come up to talk to me, and they think I'm going to be really morose. And I am, but I do that by myself - no one wants to see that. It's not really a phoniness; I just kind of keep it to myself. So I think people are surprised when they come up to talk to me and I hug them.
I've had people tell me that I should just be sad and not joke around on Twitter, but they don't understand that joking and being deeply sad are very close to each other. I'll have a horrible memory that I find hysterical one day, and the next day I'll cry about it.
One of the things that 'Too Bright' refers to is how there's a lot of times where I see things that I could change that could make me more contented, but I usually just don't make those changes because they seem new and scary. I just stay where I'm at, even if I'm miserable, because I'm familiar with it.
I don't know if I could write a pop song without at least a little touch of bite in it, and it's usually not a bite that most people would want to sing.
I like to have fun! And everything that's good for you is not fun, and that bores me.
I am fierce, yes, but I'm serious about music.
I have a strange, not very traditional voice - I'm not Adele.
If I'm not writing, I can download a newer album everybody's making a fuss about. But when I'm writing, I keep myself in my own zone - I worry about listening to new music that'll inform me too much. I'm the kind of person who goes to another country and starts speaking in an accent after three days.
I really never want to try to be cool.
I like Feist's music because it's really smart, but it's really free and soulful at the same time. Sometimes you only get one or the other.
I don't think I wrote my first song until I was 25. And then everything I wrote ended up becoming my first album. I put my music online, and from that, things just happened.
I do not work out regularly, but I do dance so much and jump around so much on stage, and I do it every day, so I feel like that's my exercise.
For me, piano is just where I started; I know where to go with it.
My mom is always asking why can't I make something nice? Because I'll make paintings, say, and they're just really bloody and angsty. So I wrote 'Dark Parts' because I wanted to write something nice for her.
