Coming to Hollywood, you always hear the horror stories, but I had good people around me who maybe didn't understand what I was doing but always protected me.

There are wonderful artists who deal in the fashion world only, and you see by their creations that they are changing our understanding of sexuality and freedom and gender-bending.

The best way to move forward - to bury the past. That doesn't mean you forget it.

L.A. is, on one hand, very mysterious; it's very modern. It's a mysterious place - it's a haunting place - and everything in our culture around the world of entertainment leads back to Hollywood.

Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career.

As a child, I loved to sing. When I was 8, my mother sent my brother and me to a summer music theater program in Texas. We did 'Guys and Dolls' at the camp, and I was so depressed when it was over. That's when I realized that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Often you hear stories about never working with children. I disagree because children still have that residual magical thinking. They haven't had their imagination knocked out of them by turning into adults and life experiences.

I don't think that anyone was trying to keep me from writing the first album. It's just when you're on 'American Idol' or a TV show like that, you wanna capitalize on that momentum, and you want to use that to your advantage, obviously, so the best way to do that is to get the music out as fast as possible. And there's no time to create, really.