Alanis Morissette

I didn’t have high self-esteem when I was a teenager, as I think most teenagers don’t.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I’m teeming with the drive to write.

We’ll love you just the way you are if you’re perfect.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

Somewhere around the fifth or seventh grade I figured out that I could ingratiate myself to people by making them laugh. Essentially, I was just trying to make them like me. But after a while it became part of my identity.

The interesting thing about my character ‘Sylar’ is that my strengths as an actor seemed to go completely against the shape of a character in the shadows. I stepped into this character and then realized how much there was to play with.

I’ve watched the Emmys for almost my whole life, so it was crazy to finally be there in the audience clapping and actually going on stage. Hopefully one day I’ll get to be actually nominated.

When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this person in between me and what I want to do?’ If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.

I don’t believe in perfection. I don’t think there is such a thing. But the energy of wanting things to be great is a perfectionist energy.

I think it’s part of being English, particularly if you are middle-class – you’re always looking to be reminded that you are no good and you are always actually embarrassed about being successful.

We were too rough at the edges to be a pop group.

My mother was a gypsy, and she had a lot of dark blood in her, and her hair was very, very thick – she couldn’t even get a brush through it. So I have been very fortunate. And every time I go to cut it off, hairdressers refuse to do it.

But it’s been 114 years. It’s like for over a century, America’s computer’s been saying, An update to your country is available and we’ve been clicking Remind me later again and again and again.

To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.

There were the Pussycat Dolls, and there’s a band called Perfect Pussy, but they’re white, so they get the pass. I can’t be Junglepussy and black, but I just push through, especially when my mother says she doesn’t have a problem with it.

I have learned a lot about myself and come to deal with a lot of things that, at first, bothered me.

Find something that makes you happy and go for it!

Well, for the My Generation album, there was nothing to be nervous about in them days. We used to take every day as it came. Every day was just a gig and I think we did the recording between gigs literally.

I got a fan letter on the back of a prison menu. And I remember thinking, ‘Well, they get pie. It’s not so bad. They get pie on the weekends.’ I want to say blueberry and also a Boston cream pie. Not so bad.