This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is - this thing that happens to everyone, so I've heard.

When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, auditioning for Broadway was my dream.

I've never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I've only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

I left the University of Chicago's creative writing program for a tenure-track job at DePauw University in Indiana, then left DePauw in 2010 for Los Angeles.

I do believe that when I'm writing music, I get addicted to the music of the concept of what the outcome of the song is, or the passion behind the lyrics.

I think it was really important for me before I 'debuted myself' in front of the world to have a private life with my imagination and my writing for several years. That also made it so I didn't feel desperate for someone to find me.

And I don't consider Broadway the acropolis of theatrical art. I mean Broadway is commercial - that's what it is. It's expensive seats and a lot of them that have to be filled every night. Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway, as far as I'm concerned, is in New York the pride of New York theater.