Puth: "On YouTube, when you have a big viral success with a song that isn't your own, the natural inclination for most YouTubers is to keep doing that. What you really should do is show people that you actually have substance and can write your own music."

Puth: "I've always made weird sounds with my mouth. I've always been fascinated by the sound design, what you can do with your mouth. I was the kid dancing around in third grade on the basketball court. While everyone would be playing sports, I would be jumping around."

Puth: "One of my goals is to find an unsigned YouTube artist and feature them on my album. That's what I wished someone would've done for me." 

Puth: "It's very easy for people to put out music."

Puth: "I was carrying my friend in his casket to put him in the hearse, and I was thinking, 'I need to write a song for this guy, because he always told me I would have a No. 1 song.'"

Puth: "I skipped class a lot."

Puth: "It's crazy because I have a scar on my right eyebrow, but people who don't know me very well think that I just intentionally shave that part of it."

Puth: "I downloaded ProTools - legally, of course... and I wanted to impress girls by making remixes of songs."

Puth: "I don't love the whole Hollywood mentality, but I do love the weather and how motivated everyone is around here. It motivates me to make fun music."

Puth: "I used to be opposed to collaboration, and that's probably why the music in the past wasn't as good. Writing with other people, especially the great writers that I've had the privilege to write with, it activates something in your mind that you wouldn't use alone."

Puth: "When we used to go to the car-wash where people would wipe the windows, my dad would go out and help them and then tip them as well, so I learned my empathy from my dad, and my mum is very empathetic too, but in a very stern way; she will always check my ego."

Puth: "Everyone's gone through a breakup, and I've dated girls in the past where... I've never had a messy breakup, thankfully, but I'm never the one to end it. I'm always caught off guard as to why things ended because I guess I'm oblivious in a way."

Puth: "The phrase 'Be Good to Each Other' is very important to me and something that I wish had been said more when I was in high school."

Puth: "When I get high anxiety, I vomit. My mom was so stressed out. Then I found out I was staying in John Mayer's old dorm room, and I had a nice roommate. That completely brought me down. I was completely comfortable at Berklee."

Puth: "What's cool about the beatboxing is I was so afraid to sing in front of my peers, my parents, anybody. I just wouldn't do it. So in sixth grade, I would turn to beatboxing because it made me feel better. Like, I can beatbox 'Drop It Like It's Hot.' Doing that a bunch of times eventually gave me the confidence to sing in front of people."

Puth: "I'm down to act a little bit - go on a couple auditions or make one of those three-second cameos with one line."

Puth: "He's the reason why I write music. If he's reading this - James Taylor, I'd love to work with you! My mom would put headphones on her belly before I was born, so I've been listening to him literally all of my life. When my dad played me 'Walking Man,' I heard those chord changes and that melody, it completely blew me away."

Puth: "I started piano when I was four. My mom taught me. And then I went to Manhattan School of Music during high school, like every Saturday. And then I went to Berklee for college, in Boston."

Puth: "I know not everyone is a musician, but it's important to find that craft and put all of your energy into that. It's about leaving the bad vibes and going to where the good vibes are."

Puth: "I had three toy buckets, and I would put hot water in them because we weren't allowed to sit in the jacuzzi - we weren't old enough - so I would charge people $1, and everyone would line up, and everyone would sit in this disgusting hot water-sand-filled thing, and I would get $1 and go to the snack bar and get an Oreo."

Puth: "When I was growing up, you had to conform and do the same thing that everyone else was doing. I would just go home and make music and be able to make myself happy, but I know that's more of a challenge for some people."

Puth: "I was raised in a Catholic school, and I would always go to church on Sunday, and I would hear the same music over and over and over and over again, same gospels, hymns, everything."

Puth: "I'm a homebody times ten."

Puth: "I leave Hollywood, I go somewhere else and make some music, and then, when I have to go back to work, I try and take as much that I get from outside Hollywood back with me."

Puth: "Every time I try to talk to people I'm unconsciously or consciously thinking about music. So yeah, I have a nine track mind, because I'm talking to you and also thinking of a million other things right now. It's nothing to do with the songs on the album. It's like Songs in A Minor by Alicia Keys; none of the songs are actually in A minor."

[On his advice to those who are being bullied]

Puth: "It's a hard question to answer, because I know every case is different, but the advice that I wish I would have given myself is to not care about what other people are thinking. Ten years goes by really quickly. I'm approaching my 10-year reunion, and people are going to be completely different when I meet up with them. And some of these people I'm still friends with. You don't hold in that anger."

Puth: "I would leave school and be bummed out for 15 minutes, and then I would take my mind of things by making music."

Puth: "The fact that people are actually shaving their eyebrows is very flattering. But it's crazy that people are singing songs I wrote in my bedroom."

[On working with Alicia Keys]

Puth: "I will say, though, that it was one of the most special songwriting sessions I've ever had. It was a very humanistic process. It didn't feel like record labels put us together. She's just a people person and it made me feel really comfortable working with a superstar. And I think we wrote a superstar song."

Puth: "I didn't grow up wealthy. We couldn't even afford spaghetti sauce when I was first born, but my mom and dad worked really hard and came from the bottom up."

Puth: "I treat Hollywood as my high school."