Musician

Being a songwriter, you are accepting that this isn't about you. If you do want it to be about you, you're going to be really miserable.

I won't do press anymore unless I can talk about the homophobia and let queer people know our ideas are mainstream.

For the most part, it's straight white men running these labels and publishing companies.

Gaga the person is much like Gaga the celebrity. She is very sweet, loyal, and funny with her fans, and she is very sweet, loyal, and funny with her friends. On stage, she is over-the-top, ridiculous, dirty, and genuine on stage, and she is very over-the-top, ridiculous, dirty, and genuine with her friends.

My success happened pretty late in life. I can't even believe it happened.

I was very lucky that my family really supported me in exploring my femininity when I was young, and so it was a joyous thing.

Music spoke to me when I was young in such an intimate, empowering, magical way, and I think that music is already doing that for young queer kids.

It's interesting to see the more femme that you present yourself, the more people sort of dehumanize you.

I love to give the song away - it's so exciting - where, I think, a lot of younger songwriters, they struggle with that. And it's a big struggle, where they want the shine and they want people to know that it was their idea and it was their doing. But luckily, I've been through that, so I can just focus on helping other people do their thing.

In every school, there's always the kid who gets it the worst, and I was, for sure, that kid. Every time you had to get in a line that was boys and girls, it was like my worst nightmare. A lot of kids I know got made fun of for being gay; that was not my issue: I was just called a girl endlessly.

Truly saying sorry is never easy to do, and when you are, you just hope it's not too late.

A man in high heels is the most dangerous thing in the world.

Great music is just very clear. Sonically and lyrically, you understand the point of view, you understand the melodies, you understand the vibe, and you understand the lyric pretty damn quickly. To me, that doesn't make it 'less than' - it makes it 'more than.'

Before anything else, my favorite thing as a fan of music was to make up my own story as to what it means.

In some ways, it's more rewarding to hear someone interpret a piece of music that you're a part of.

Pop just means popular - it can be any genre, and if it becomes popular, then it's pop music.

Young women should be telling stories of other young women. And if the superstar who is an amazing storyteller isn't a writer, that's totally fine, but we should get a young female writer in the room to work on that song with us.

I really loved Kygo and Selena Gomez's 'It Ain't Me.'

I don't like labels.

A couple of days working with Joe Jonas, I thought, 'This guy is a slayer of a singer; he's really funny, goofy, and sexy. We need to write that.' And that led to 'Cake By The Ocean.'