Zola Jesus

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

It sounds kind of stupid, but I've never not wanted to be a musician. It's been inside me since I was little so I don't know what else I would do.

I don't find much influence in opera. It was such a different part of me.

I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.

I'm not afraid of wanting money at all. Money will give me more power to do things that are truer to my spirit than what I'm already doing.

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.