Quotes from Melanie Martinez

So like what I want to do is connect all of my albums and make it tell a bigger kind of story. So the first album is very focused on her family life and her love life.

I love Nicoletta Ceccoli , and I love Tim Burton movies. So those are like my biggest inspirations I think.

I love directing my music videos and writing video treatments, and I think it's all just because I love the visual aspect of it as well.

I think that any female who gets asked if she's a feminist... it's silly... it's so interesting when people ask females if they're a feminist. Of course every female wants to be equal!

Working on this album has been very emotional and super personal, and creating this character 'Cry Baby' helped me deal with my own insecurities.

I've always written the storyboards for the music videos, and it's been hard working with directors trying to get them to understand what I'm thinking.

I wrote about scenarios that I was going through and then disguised them.

I wanted people to understand that I have my own music, and I didn't want to sing other people's songs at shows.

I was genuinely happy when I wrote that song [Training Wheels] and very in love. That's a very rare emotion to evoke out of me.

I grew up on Long Island. It was pretty normal.

There's a heavy hip-hop influence in my music, some trap influence, but it's always lyrical.

I want my music to be treated as a book or a movie. It's not about the one single: it's about the bigger picture.

I listen to a lot of music. But I definitely haven't looked at an artist and like thought I want to have a song like this.

It's one thing to ask for a picture, but to just take a picture of me is kinda weird, guys.

The real me is this deep, kind of somber person. I can't really help that.

I always try, when I'm singing songs, to interpret them the way that I would've arranged them. I think about the melody first, and then I pull out my guitar and start singing it.

I had a lot of Barbies growing up, and a lot of porcelain dolls, but I was scared of them. I was so scared of them, I would try to turn their head away and would make my mom take them out of my room.

I had been writing songs for awhile - since I was 14 - and playing guitar, but I never really knew how to go about making an actual career.

My whole mission in general, ever since I was fourteen, was to write music that would help people heal.

To me, I absolutely cannot stand Twitter. I hate it more than anything.

I like scaring myself.

Please understand that I make music to express myself, and if you know anything about me, you know that I'm nothing but honest.

I think that 'Cry Baby' came from a nickname I was called as a kid.

I didn't have any real idea that I was going to be an artist; I had no idea what that meant.