Growing up in the '80s in central New Jersey as a weird kid with a blue mohawk listening to the Sex Pistols and dressing really funky, I was bullied pretty badly. It was every single day in elementary school and kept going into middle school, too. I felt totally alone, without a single person there for me.

Growing up in New Jersey, teen clubs were your life. I'm not kidding! That was it. I was literally tied up five days a week with teen clubs; my parents would drop me off. Like, I didn't even drive.

I am a biological female. I have two children. I've been married for 16 years. I've never been a man.

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.

I thought when I started meditation that I was going to get real calm and peaceful and it's going to be over. It's not that way; it's so energetic. That's where all the energy and creativity is.

I don't feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it's one's particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.

I wanted to start doing more music, doing more things than just playing guitar. I started taking singing lessons and piano lessons. I need to learn more things, to be an artist or whatever, and then transfer that back into writing songs.