"My brother was supposed to watch me when she went off to work. I was, like, 6 and he was probably 16, and he would leave and go out with his friends; he was wild. So I got very used to being on my own and feeling very vulnerable and scared. I saw a lot of craziness in my house.I could've ended up psycho drug - addict nutcase,but I made the right decisions by looking at people who made the wrong decisions and saying, I'm not going to be like them." "I'm not this one - dimensional girl who sits in a field wearing a flannel shirt or stands onstage singing only ballads,and I feel I'm in a better position to express myself at this point"

"I definitely couldn't get through my life without music and it's been like that since I was a kid.All I ever wanted to do was sing. And my mom always told me, You are special, you have a talent, and, If you believe you can do something, you can do it. It is not an unrealistic goal."

I was OK until I had to walk up this ramp on to the stage and I heard this deafening scream and it was kinda like everything in my life, this whole incredible whirlwind I'd been going through, it had all been leading up to that insane moment and there I was.

“I’d like to dedicate this next song to the men who subdued the gunman on the Long Island Railroad, this week, and prevented him from killing even more people, I-I-I, you know, I grew up on long island and I took the long island railroad thousands of times and a lot of people very close to me take the long island rail road every day, and I was shocked and horrified by this tragedy, so I decided to donate, the funds form the sales of this next single to the families of the victims of the long island tragedy. And its called “Hero”.”

“It made me feel good to be embraced by all different, you know, charts and things like that, um because it made me feel like its okay to be who I am. I don’t always have to worry about, you know, well maybe they’re thinking um this or maybe they think, you know what I mean, Its like why does it have to be about that, you know, my father’s black and Venezuelan, and my mothers Irish you know I should be able to be a combination of those things, and not have to worry about, but what are you, you know what I mean, but which one of those 3 thing are you. Its like I’m all of them and that’s who I am. To deny one would be to deny my self.”

“I don’t really think that I should need that to validate me as an artist. And I don’t think that that should be my focal point, you know, because what if you do something that your just feeling as an artist and wanting to express yourself, and doing a totally different style of music. I mean and it debuts at number 98 does that mean its not good? No, it just doesn’t mean it’s like the popular thing of the moment,”

"I can't say exactly what it means because it's very personal.The reason I called it 'Petals' is because it's about relationships that are now static and I don't think I can ever pull them back in. It's also about parts of my life that are now gone. Then it leads into 'Rainbow,' which is the hopeful part, and finally into 'Thank God,' which is happy, so there's kind of a theme. 'Petals' was the last song I recorded for the album. The bridge addresses a lot of my anger about people who saw me in a really bad state and just let it go because they were afraid to say something. There are people that I want to say certain things to, and I hope they hear it and get it on a lot of levels."

"My new motto is 'None of this matters.Just have a good time."