Halsey

“When you're an artist, you're expected to describe yourself in interviews every day in five words.”

“I'm open about having bipolar disorder. I'm open about being of mixed race. I'm open about being bisexual, and I have this wantingness to talk about it, and for me, it's about more than being a role model for any specific community.”

“I think escapism is something artists write about pretty frequently - it's something everyone can relate to, the concept of wanting something more, wanting to find solace, wanting to have something better.”

“I'm not actually even a very good singer. I'm not.”

“I used to work at a punk venue in Pennsylvania because I wanted to be near music.”

“To be fair, I did come out of nowhere. 'Ghost' was the first song I ever did in a studio, my first time ever cutting a professional vocal.”

“My mom has every issue of 'Billboard' I've ever been in.”

“Growing up in the suburbs, I used to listen to punk rock, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday. And no one from my high school listened to it.”

“When I was in high school, I was a bad kid and a good student.”

“I want to be treated like a musician.”

“My mom is awesome. She's really young. My mom is 40, and she raised me listening to Nirvana and Courtney Love and Coldplay, Gin Blossoms, The Cranberries, and stuff. Like, my early, early memories are of being a little kid running around in floral skirts and Doc Martens when I was, like, three.”

“Being bisexual, being bipolar, being biracial - it's been used to define me, but I am desperate to be indefinable.”

“I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.”

“I love Kanye West. I think he's a visionary. He's one of those people for whom I separate his personality from his artistry.”

“You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you're not inspired, and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived, and I don't like to write music that's contrived.”

“It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.”

“As a songwriter, pop music really is a love and a joy and a science, and I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural.”

“If I am who I am, I'm provocative, candid, and androgynous; there's nothing I can do that will make any fan think, 'I didn't expect that from her.'”

“Every 16-year-old person has a love for pop in them because pop is popular.”

“You numb yourself so you're not terrified when you're on TV at 7 o'clock in the morning with Justin Bieber, who you just met a couple of days before, having to perform in front of millions of people.”