Vanessa Carlton

I don't put boundaries on myself when I sit at the piano.

When it comes to music, we live in a very different world than everyone did in the 1960s and 1970s.

But my mom was a pianist, and she taught piano out of her house. I was just so excited, being a little kid and having all these other kids come to my house twice a week. I thought it was a big party.

The women who don't feel that people think they're sexy are the ones who seem to titillate in that way, because they don't feel like they're getting that kind of approval.

The music industry is so easy compared to the ballet world.

I tour with a piano, actually. Luckily I am able to hire people that deal with it completely and magically a piano appears on stage and then magically disappears when I leave.

Food can become such a point of anxiety - not because it's food, but just because you have anxiety. That's how eating disorders develop.

Now, performing is second nature and I love every second of it. It is a very emotional thing when I can't play a song; maybe I'm hitting on something that I don't want to deal with. All of it is so personal. It is like therapy.

I am not this big celebrity, but it gets really crazy. You have to go through the nuts of blowing up, in a sense, and then figuring out how to live your life with that.

My mom would give me a piece to play, but I wouldn't do any theory because when it came time to do it I would sneak back upstairs and watch TV. So, I had these kind of nonchalant lessons for years, then it just started soaking in.

A lot of people give in to those pressures and let others influence the process on their second albums because they want to achieve the success they had with their first again, but they don't know how to do it.

I am always drawn to men that are funny. I do not know why. But I am always drawn to people that are struggling with parts of themselves... But it's like in the end, there has to be confidence.