Quotes from Laura Jane Grace

I guess I get a little impatient and frustrated when people ask what 'Manic Depression' is about.

The period of time between when you're done with a record and when you start touring is the worst period of a time in a musician's life.

I think that on paper we did make so many of the classic mistakes that a punk band makes, signing to a major label, getting in business with the wrong people, stuff like that.

I don't want to be just that transgender performer or that transgender musical artist. I want to create songs and art and have those be judged on their merit alone.

I recognize that I'm in a band, and part of being in a band is doing interviews, and I do have a platform so I want to use that platform to talk about things that are real.

Living in Italy meant growing up without MTV.

I've always wanted to be a writer, and I've kept journals since I was eight years old.

I've been keeping tour journals since I was 17 years old.

I'm totally fine with myself. It's the other people I run into out there who are so hung up on gender. The way it trips them up is their problem, not mine.

Butch Vig was a true friend and really guided us, and it was such a fulfilling relationship with a person to make records with.

Every musician out there wants to be judged on the merit of their songwriting, the merit of their performing abilities.

I'm big on hair. I love Julianne Moore's hair. That's all I'd like: Julianne Moore hair.

My father was stationed in Italy in the military. I had no one to feed me what was cool, so I was into Guns N' Roses and New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer and a lot of '80s hair bands. But I was never into Motley Crue, they never stuck with me.

Going on tour for 10 years straight and playing 200-plus shows a year, you can't ever come back from that mentally. You're twisted in a weird way where you need that in order to be a person still.

I just always knew that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a musician. I never had any doubts.

Writing your memoir is inherently narcissistic.

I'd never have imagined it when I was younger. A trans woman on the cover of 'Time?' That is unfathomable to the 15-year-old me.

I grew up with a mother who always had every fashion magazine stacked up on the side of her bed. When I was really young, I'd lie in bed with her, and we'd look at the magazines.

I had gone from being married with a kid, two cars, garage, nice house in a nice neighborhood to all of it gone.

As an artist, you're just observing the world around you. So much is overwhelming and it's all so inescapable that it can't all speak to general cultural statements.

When I'm on tour, people see me in one way, but in normal life I doubt people even recognize me.

A lot of what keeps me going is wanting to be better, thinking I'm not good enough.

I sleep with a notebook next to me, and most nights I sleep with my guitar next to me.

That's one of the biggest fears a lot of trans people have if they decide to come out, that they're making themselves unlovable and that they'll never have a relationship again.