Ask your parents questions straight away, or you’ll never know.

Life doesn't offer you the perfect opportunity at the perfect time. Opportunities come when you least expect them ... Rarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way. In a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. ‘Here, open it, it's perfect. You'll love it.’ Opportunities -- the good ones -- are messy, confusing and hard to recognize. They're risky. They challenge you.

I just say, “Follow your instincts.” Don’t feel you have to follow the paths of others, because you may not be temperamentally fitted for it. And so you’ll just harm yourself and your cause and others. But just follow your instinct, and don’t ever pretend to be what you’re not.

You have to be intelligent, and be able to cope with stress. It is a stressful life, both mentally and physically. Those are the qualities to succeed as a surgeon.

I'm most proud of maintaining my sense of identity, you know, because I had a lot of success, and the whole whirlwind sort of happened during very formative years for me,

People think that to be a pop star you have to look a certain way. I want to show people that there’s an alternative.

This is something I still have to learn and figure out because I'm not perfect at it yet — but I've learned that just even something as simple as breathing properly can be a really nice form of meditation. Also talking to people about it. I started going to therapy, which has been really helpful just to get it out. Of course for me as a songwriter, writing helps. So does taking things a day at a time and stopping to just breathe because I'm a person who really thinks so far in advance all the time.

But there's a big difference between being ungrateful and being a human being going through things. That took me a while to accept. Once you do, I think it's a lot more comforting to know that it's absolutely okay to feel whatever it is you're feeling, no matter how positive your life seems.

I think now, especially with Love & Hyperbole, I was like, let me just write the best thing that I can make for myself. Totally intuitively.

It was very challenging at first, as I came straight out of high school where my lifestyle was so different to that of a professional musician. I lived such a secluded life – I went from school to home, school to home, and never travelled anywhere. I hadn’t figured out who I was, as I hadn’t explored anything yet. To jump into the completely opposite lifestyle so quickly and so young was difficult – I was very afraid, and didn’t know how to say no.