Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.

I'm a writer. I've written most of the music we've performed. Most people don't know that because no one cares who writes the music. But, that's who I am. I've written poetry since I was a little girl. Music was an evolution of that.

I'm a songwriter first, have always been, and probably always will be. Making the demo is a natural product of writing a song; after that, I'm happy to hear other people do it in other ways.

A good song is a good song, and if I'm lucky enough to write it, well....! I get more kick out of writing than I do singing. I reckon I've written a thousand songs and had over 300 published.

Why do we write music, what does inspires us? Well, in the beginning it was just having instruments around and just loving music and bands and all that but then recently it just seems to me to be a point of existence, you know? I can't work at anything else in the world except at how to write songs and I think we all (the band) just escape into it, you know what I mean? source

When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.

It was so frightening at the time to be seventeen and have heart monitors hooked up to you. That was the moment the songwriter in me was born. I discovered a whole other side of me. I came home that night and started writing lyrics. I discovered it all at once: It was like opening up a lockbox, and inside was a depth that I didn't even know I had as a person, or a writer — incredible creativity and vision and neurosis, complete neurosis. They all go together in a package.

To me, song writing is so therapeutic, it's just part of my life and I can't go through the day without having some kind of song idea pop into my head where I have to write Sharpie all over my arm trying to remember the song idea."

Writing songs has a lot to do with your sexuality. I danced for awhile and just being around that made me realize what people use. And if you grow up blessed with a certain beauty or a certain intelligence that enhances your beauty, you can get into a better position in life.

If people call me a songwriter, I am honored to be called that. I’m keenly aware that I’m lucky to get to work with these writers.

I write to get to the bottom of whatever I’m feeling. And I hope that my music will comfort the people who hear it, and maybe help them process whatever they need to.

(Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience.

I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness.

I am a writer an a singer of the words I write I am no speaker nor any politician an my songs speak for me because I write them in the confinement of my own mind an have t cope with no one except my own self.