I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that's important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.
I was a film major because, for some reason, I thought that that was a creative job that had more job opportunities. I don't know what logic I was following, but that was my impression at the time.
I think what's hard for me is not that I don't get downtime to chill, it's that I don't get time to make music.
When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to... I finally feel like myself.
When you're an adult, things mellow out. I think when you're a teenager and you are sad and the world is ending, everything is about that one sadness.
I'm Japanese, and I'm also white American, and neither camp wants me in their camp.
What's important to me is that my songs can exist without any material anything. It's very reflective of my ideology.
I think it's very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.
On one hand, I think it's very important to talk about race and talk about gender, because if it's not talked about, then we won't progress. What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.
I think it's our responsibility as artists to not only fight for our art but fight for the communities that are the reason we're able to continue making art, especially since, in Brooklyn's case, we as artists somehow made it 'cool' enough for the bigger money-making industries to start taking over.
I think my whole identity is formed around not knowing where I'm from. It might even be that I find comfort in that confusion.
I've been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.
I'm not an innovator.
I don't care about making anything new. I make music to express an emotion, and if the emotion is nostalgic, so be it.
Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.
When I started making music, I was like, 'This is something I can believe I was meant to do.'
Music was the one thing that was just mine, and no one could take it from me. I created it, dictated it, and it made me not able to let go of it.
A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn't like that for me. I didn't think of it as a job or a career - it was just something that was constant.
You can never learn enough about music.
I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn't last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn't have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.
