"When I discovered music - when I discovered the craft of shaping a song - my being fell into place."

"I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and that's why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each other's name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound."

"You're going to make something wonderful of yourself. I promise.You're doing just fine."

"I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I'm born to leave."

"I just wish you could see my demons for what they are, and lay here beside me on the floor. No words. Just your presence."

"This is my story. I don't know where I'm going, but I know I'm going somewhere beautiful, and I know I'm on my way... It's been a beautiful adventure. It always will be."

"Dear world, I am excited to be alive in you, and I am thankful for another year."

"I am slowly coming to the conclusion that it's more important to learn to work with what you've got, under the circumstances you've been given, than wishing for different ones."

"I rest in ease, knowing there are others out there, whispering themselves to sleep, just like me."

"What I want to know is how you go on when you look aroundand don't see anywhere you want to go without the only personyou can't have."

"No one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Get yourself some books and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what books he read himself. Take yourself out for dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. it's a lovely feeling, to feel pretty. You don't need anyone to confirm it."

"I'm not everything I want to be, but I'm more than I was, and I'm still learning."

"See, my aim is not to survive but to be thrown to the wolfs with adrenaline still pumping in my veins and hear the gods laughing saying that was one hell of a youth and everything I do I do in order to push my senses and levels of natural ecstasy. I want to be so awake that I pass out by exhaustion every night with a smile on my face and no thoughts of tomorrow because today was all I ever could make of it and I am sick and tired of boredom. Bored people slumbering boring words about bored habits and I want to get out."

"Spend more time doing things that make you forget about the time."

"Loveis not leaning on each other, adjusting to fit a different size.Loveis simply two hands reached out in the darkness,saying; I'll be your light, if you'll be mine."

"This year has taught me the simple craft of belief. I believe in the things I've nurtured and built this year. Slowly but carefully. Such as understanding, knowledge, passion, strength; the hundreds of songs I've written, the 365 poems, the books I've read and the miles I've run. The resolution to breathe, to meditate, to not harm my mind or body even when I've felt like it."

"People keep asking what I do for a living and I keep saying that I don't believe in making a living. That it's a concept that has been twisted. I tell them I believe in making a life and money is a distracting object if there's anything left at the end of the day and I just want to go on well. Make it through the day. So I smile and raise my glass and they laugh and take my hand, saying here's to the youth, pointing at me. And I might just be youngand naivefor I still believe in the freedom of choiceof how to spend your life.So they toast to the youth, who still think she's free, and that's all fine by me."

"It was quite a beautiful thing, the way we simply just came to be, with no effort or trying and slowly we found each other's hands in the dark. No chains or promises, just a simple sign of hope that things will go on and get better and that things and people and views are still out there, yet to be found."

"Inspiration is everywhere."

"I will missmy chest explodingyou coming home latenot turning on the lightalways waking me upI will missthe sudden burst of safetywhen you look at meor hold my handor say something likelet's go homeI will missthe years I loston something or someone.The pieces didn't fit, shaped wrongthe timing slightly off.I loved you like I always will."

"It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in limits. It's about reaching beyond your so-called potential, because your potential is never where you or anyone else expects it to be, not even close. It's about being able to say with the last breath of your life "I used all my potential and all my talents and pushed myself to the limit. I could not have fought any harder."

"It's January and I'm kicking snow off the ground. I just threw out the flower you made me promise to water, handle with care, because I was too careless, you said. Careless with things and people, around me and behindand I remember being still for just a second or two, thinking that it's so much easier to leave and start anew, than take care of what's already here."

"I don't want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it."

"I was never afraid of the dark and I spent my youth walking through empty playgrounds at midnight, worried mothers telling girls to be careful and the world is an ugly place and not everyone wants you well. But I was not afraid and I wished for adrenaline to make my veins pulsate in that way that puts them more on the outside of my skin than inside.After the first night with you I never walked alone at night again because suddenly I had something to lose. Something to save."

"It's just as hard to go back to a place you once left, as it is to leave it again."

"Well, at least this is what I told myself every day as I fell asleep with the fire still burning and the moon shining high up in the sky and my head spinning comforting from two bottles of wine, and I smiled with tears in my eyes because it was beautiful and so god damn sad and I did not know how to be one of those without the other."

"I go to the ocean to say goodbye."

"I am a complicated person with a simple life and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me."

"Time flows smoother when you are with people you love."

"You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be."

"And you might try to hide or protect yourself, or compare the different states of love,but you must not grow up, must not act wise when it comes to love.You must stay foolish and fall for every heart will beat in different ways together with yours and love is not meant to be compared, only enjoyed, and suffered, and remembered."

"Am I making something worth while?I'm not sure.I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts,but am I making something worth while?I'm not sure.There was a boy last night who I never spoke to because I was too drunk and still shy, but mostly lonely, and I couldn't find anything lightly to say,so I simply walked awaybut still wondered what he did with his lifebecause he didn't even speak to meor look at mebut still made me wonder who he wasand I walked away askingAm I making something worth while?I am not sure.I am a complicated person with a simple lifeand I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me."

"You become a house where the wind blows straight through, because no one bothers the crack in the window or lock on the door, and you're the house where people come and go as they please, because you're simply too unimpressed to care. You let people in who you really shouldn't let in, and you let them walk around for a while, use your bed and use your books, and await the day when they simply get bored and leave. You're still not bothered, though you knew they shouldn't have been let in in the first place, but still you just sit there, apathetic like a beggar in the desert."

"I want to learn how to speak to anyone at any time and make us both feel a little bit better, lighter, richer, with no commitments of ever meeting again. I want to learn how to stand wherever with whoever and still feel stable. I want to learn how to unlock the locks to our minds, my mind, so that when I hear opinions or views that don't match up with mine, I can still listen and understand. I want to burn up lifeless habits of following maps and to-do lists, concentrated liquids to burn my mind and throatand I want to go back to the way nature shaped me. I want to learn to go on well with whatever I have in my hands at the momentin a natural state of mind,certain like the sea.I will find comfort in the rhythm of the sea."

"And the rain drops kept falling like the sweetest musicleaving tears on the glass,which is what music does to memost of the timebut silence too. and rain."

"It's called being an artist for a reason, it's something YOU ARE. It's how you live. It's WHO you are. How you spend your life and what you leave behind."

"There comes a time for healingno matter how broken you are right now;no matter how heavy your heart is right now.There comes a time when you will go outsideand let the sun shine on your faceand let the wind touch your hairand you will not be tired by just simply being awake.There comes a time when you will be happy to be alive againand that day you will appreciate your own beingbecause now you know the other side.Now you know the opposite.Now you know what it's like to not be sure if you really are; whoyou really are;if you simply are, anymore.And that daywill be the beginning of everything."

"Freedom can choke you if you don't know how to handle it."

"I built my home in the feeling of waking up at dawn in a new city, where every road is the right road because there is no ordinary. Everything is as profound as you make it."

"It doesn't matter how many times you leave, it will always hurt to come back and remember what you once had and who you once were. Then it will hurt just as much to leave again, and so it goes over and over again. Once you've started to leave, you will run your whole life."

"You might say "no, you will never do that, that's not you, not who I know, not who I thought you were, and I will say "watch me"."

"Make someone feel something and you will never be forgotten."

"Great growth comes from loneliness. You have time to develop, dwell in your own mind and go a bit mad. All great people are a bit mad. That's good to remember. Don't escape it. Great growth comes from time spent in foreign lands, watching foreign people with foreign cultures. It makes you forget about your own land and race and town for a while. Great growth also comes from rooting yourself into one place from time to time. Unpack your bags, get a nice bed, a book shelf, some friends. Learn to show up, keep in touch, stick around. Growth comes in all sort of forms and shapes, everywhere at all times, and it's yours to take and consume. Do what ought to be done. Here and now, to get you somewhere - anywhere."

"When the others were picked up and walked home by friends or fathers or best friend's sisters,I was the kid in a grey hoodie, walking with the poets, the singers, the thinkers, and I was not alone."

"I know there are days when even one single positive thought feels like too much effort, but you must develop an unconditional love for life. You must never lose your childish curiosity for the possibilities in every single day. Who you can be, what you can see, what you can feel and where it can lead you. Be in love with your life, everything about it. The sadness and the joys, the struggles and the lessons, your flaws and strengths, what you lose and what you gain."

"I used to be fine in my lonelinessbut somethingor someonesnapped me out of itand showed me company. What it's like to feel at home,and so the going on by myself part wasn't as easy anymore.Seasons happened and things got colder and harder and suddenly I found myself smoking circles in the airby myself in the snowand I was not okay."

"An artist must be passionately in love with her art. Obsessed or possessed - go mad for what you believe in."

"Find something you love and go for it with all your heart. No excuses, no plan B. Never settle for anything less than you know you can do.It will be hard, but I promise it will be worth it."

"The final magnificent spark of a firework is only the last seconds of the fall. Though it's invisible to most, it's the way up that creates all the impact."

"Being passionate about something is the most beautiful characteristic you can develop."