I try to create songs that are really massive and intense, but at the same time remaining honest and raw.

I started performing opera when I was 10 years old. I didn't perform as Zola Jesus until I was probably 18.

I don't know why people think I'm a Goth - that's a misconception.

You are born and then you die, but in between you can do anything you want. It's society that creates rules for us, but you can break out of that.

The most important thing for us to do as beings is to be aware of our position in the world on a micro and macro level.

I feel like humans are a disease. It's a hard thing to communicate in a pop song. I mean, who wants to hear that?

My music started as a way to break through weaknesses - like anxiety, which was completely taking over my whole life, where I could barely function.

No matter what you do, if there's something you're afraid of, you need to break through it.

I like to remind myself that everything is meaningless.

And my music is always such a release of what I feel inside, an impulse.

I know for sure that nothing matters.

Happy people tend to be those who take pleasure in simple things.

More times than I’m willing to admit I am my own worst enemy, which suggests that more times than I’m willing to admit I should allow God to be my own best friend.

Family isn't blood, " she said bitterly, continuing to back away. "Family is who loves you, who takes care of you.

Competition is easier to accept if you realize it is not an act of oppression or abrasion-I've worked with my best friends in direct competition.

My life with Howard Hughes was and shall remain a matter on which I will have no comment.

I do not believe 'Newsweek' is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we're one of them, and I don't think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.

No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.

One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay.

I worry about another leg down in the economies causing social disruption because deleveragings can be very painful - it depends on how they're managed.

These are the days of the endless summer, these are the days, the time is now. There is no past, there's only future, there's only here, there's only now.