Quotes from Frankie Cosmos

When I was younger, my view of New York was really wide-eyed and excited. I've lived here all my life.

Around seventh grade, I got a guitar and forgot everything else.

I'm not just going to hug every person that asks to hug me.

If I could have a record that represents every stage of my life, I'd be putting out one a month. Everything is always changing, and so is the way that I feel about stuff.

Performing is something that has really grown on me and become an important part of my life, which I didn't used to feel. I didn't used to want to really perform live a lot. It's been an interesting adjustment.

I definitely think that touring is a really crazy lifestyle and makes it hard to live a normal life and have relationships and friendships.

I feel like touring is a man's game. And I don't think that's sexist; I just think, on tour, you can't really take care of yourself the way you want to.

Once you're in a position where you can choose to not be around toxic environments, just do that as much as you can.

The first music-learning thing that I took seriously was piano lessons when I was a kid. I guess that was probably the only time that I was forced to perform music, because I had piano recitals, and my school also had mandatory music classes that had some performing required.

You meet a lot of people in New York who are different than you and have different stories, so I see everyone as super individual. I feel like I can be infinitely inspired because New York is huge.

I realized I was trained my whole life to be an accommodating person, to make sure that everybody is comfortable before I'm comfortable. After giving so much of myself to strangers, I learned to care for myself a little more, especially on tour.

One of the cool things about traveling and being a musician is that you meet so many people who have studied different things and have different careers.

Writing songs about it is a really useful way for me to love New York more, and stay observing it, and not just zone it out.

The thing is, I feel like it would defeat the purpose of being a musician if I let any kind of fear of failure affect my songwriting or making an album or whatever.

I think I'm always changing as a writer and trying new things.

I knew that 'Next Thing' was an angry album while I was making it. But I thought that it was angry the way that you get in a fight, not angry as a huge life change.

I don't actually have problems dealing with corporate situations. There are times I've railed against it, but there are other times when I'm like, 'I'll take your money, no problem.'

Those emotions that are really strong, the ones that inspire a song, you can hold onto that. You can let it marinate for years and keep writing about it even better than you did then.

My brother was 13 when people started telling me that he was a 'hipster.' I was 11 and thought it was so stressful, like, 'How do you not be called that?'

I've definitely gotten to the point where we get to the venue, and people know that I'm in charge of the band.

I was seeing kids my age playing shows at their parents' houses or the couple of all-ages venues that existed. I feel like I saw so many different kinds of music that I wouldn't have discovered on my own.

I kind of like the idea of creating my own literature within my albums. I definitely thought about that when I started writing songs.

I feel like I can't write something that has a real emotion in it if I can't connect to that emotion.

My parents have both done some music stuff. My family was very artist-friendly, so that was encouraging.