Quotes from Alessia Cara

I was too shy to do any vocal lessons or go to choirs; I just didn't want to be seen doing it. It's something that I kept to myself. I started easing into it, and I started doing talent shows, and YouTube really helped with that, too.

The only thing I'm really, truly good at is music - I just love it.

'Wild Things' is saying, 'I don't have to belong anywhere. This is where I belong.' It's a place in the back of my mind that I created, and it's cool, and I love it here.

It's good to have a reminder that we can love ourselves and be beautiful even though we don't really fit into certain standards of what beauty may be.

Flannel shirts, denim, Converse, a guitar, messy hair? That's literally me.

Often, as teens, we think we know everything, but actually we're just trying to figure life out, and we don't know much at all.

It's not that I don't care how I look, but I'd rather turn the attention to the music as much as possible.

I do feel pressure from the outside world a little bit just because everybody wants new music, which is really nice. It just proves that everybody likes what I'm doing. But at the same time, I feel like it's important to just chill and experience things and really make the songs true to me.

I'm here to make music; I'm not here be a fashion model.

The fact that there's people out there that care about what I'm eating for breakfast or care about a tweet that I posted in 2012 that they pulled up because they were searching on my Twitter and things like that - it's hard to understand, because it's just me, and I just think, 'What's so interesting about me?'

Maybe I'm not a typical pop star, but I don't think there's a mould for a pop star or singer. You can do whatever you want.

If Ed Sheeran covered my songs, I would die. That would be unbelievable.

My family is from the south of Italy in this little place called Calabria. It's a big part of my family, the Italian culture. I grew up around it. My parents speak Italian, and I speak Italian.

We should just know that we can all create this special, safe place within ourselves that we can feel comfortable in and that doesn't necessarily have to be with other people.

I'm just glad that there's some diversity in the music industry with women so people know that you can be literally anything and still be able to make it.

I think fame is such a scary thing, and it's something I can never understand. It's terrifying, but it's the only way I get to do what I love every day, you know?

For some reason, I'm constantly attacked on social media in terms of how I dress. I've never understood that. That's been very hard.

Frank Ocean would be incredible; I'd love to be a sponge and absorb everything he says. Every song he puts out, I'm like, 'Why didn't I think of this?'

I'd like to shut off all the noise and allow people to be creative without all the judgments and standards that we think we have to follow.

The first time I sang in front of an audience, I was about 14 - it was at my guitar school's showcase, and there were about 30 people there. I was so nervous, but I did it.

As a kid, my parents would always listen to a lot of Beatles, Queen, Elvis. My mom was born and raised in Italy, and my dad was born in Canada and moved back and forth between Canada and Italy, so they would also listen to all the big Italian stars like Eros Ramazzotti, Gigi D'Alessio, Tiziano Ferro, Laura Pausini.

I just want to keep my normal life for as long as possible.

I was a very strange child.

I barely have time to think. But the best way to stay grounded is to take it one day at a time.