JP Saxe

“I prefer to be out of the way, not because of an insecurity or shyness but because I think art is at its best when it has you thinking about yourself, the people you love, and your own life.”

“I Don't Miss You' is me trying to lie to myself about my feelings - how I distract myself from them, how I compartmentalize them, and how I ultimately lose to them.”

“I wasn't really sure how to fit in when I was younger, and I spent a lot of time by myself.”

“There's too many moments... to not accept there's something exciting and mystical going on.”

“I want to be watching and reading enough about what's going on to feel informed and empathetically connected to the world around me, but not enough to have anxiety keeping me up at night.”

“I don't think, as an artist, you should be trying to make music for every moment of someone's day.”

“I recognise that my music is probably for your 1 A.M. alone time - and I'm ok with that because, the truth is, that's where I wrote most of it. I mean, if I'm going out dancing, I certainly don't want to listen to my music.”

“I don't think in the post-apocalyptic skillset 'sensitive songwriting' is one of them.”

“It would require a lot of neglect of my own life and memory to say I don't believe in serendipity.”

“Love will always get better than a love that doesn't want you back.”

“As teenagers, acceptance is such an important part of our life. But this is not something you get made fun of or bullied about. The movement is spreading.”

“In the grand scheme of things, choosing your love for somebody over the petty reasons you don't talk to someone is a meaningful consideration.”

“Since I was a kid, I've always felt like songs were saying things to me.”

“Things often feel real when we're able to share them.”

“Oscar Peterson's 'Hymn to Freedom' is the first song I ever lifted on the piano. I learned it note-for-note and it's still probably the first thing I play sitting down at a new piano. One of my favourite melodies of all time.”

“I thought for a long time I needed to look at other people who were successful and then do what they did. But over the years, I realized I will be the most successful if I just do exactly what I love and exactly what I want to do and exactly the way I want to do it.”

“I think a lot about the morality of songwriting, and the line in the sand I've arrived at is that sharing your feelings about someone is totally above board, but when you start talking about their specific personal details, you've crossed the line.”

“The first time I heard 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,' I did not know music could sound like that. The vocal arrangement on 'Tell Him,' the way that makes me feel is unlike anything I've ever heard.”

“If I'm not being myself in my music, I'm getting up on stage every night and lying to myself; it would be a real cause for identity crisis.”

“To me, songs hit harder when they live in the questions, because songs have always been a mode of sorting through my emotions. If I waited to figure them out before I wrote them, they'd be really boring, preachy songs.”