Sawayama: "I reject the status of a suffering artist, I just want to enjoy my career."

Sawayama: "Country music is not trying to complicate things. The important thing about country songwriting is that you’re telling the true reality about what’s happening to you, and that’s something I’ve been trying to stay true to."

Sawayama: "Drag is turning trauma into humour and entertainment and that’s what I’m trying to do."

Sawayama: "Growing up means you know what to give to your therapist, you know what to give to your parents, you know what to give to your friends. You give a different part of yourself to different people, and that is fine. You don’t have to be consistently the same person."

Sawayama: "You just can’t live too seriously."

Sawayama: "“What do I want? Who do I want to be? What do I want sexually? What do I want in relationships? All those things I did not know until I was 30."

Sawayama: "I really think that fun and humour is one of the best ways to get over something, once you’ve done the emotional work."

Sawayama: "I used to get so mad about things like microaggressions, and I still do, but as you get older, you just kind of sadly become numb to it."

Sawayama: "When you find that community that you can be safe around and joke with, you reclaim certain things."

Sawayama: "I have to listen to that old album to remind myself of my values sometimes. There’s something to be said for, almost like the process of therapy, identifying [a trauma] and cementing your perspective in it. But to be angry like you are when you’re 13 for the rest of your life is probably not healthy."

Sawayama: "Before people come up to you they look at you, I’m like: oh fuck, what do they want? What’s on my face?"

Sawayama: "There’s a sense of obligation—saying yes to things that I, deep down, don’t want to do—that can come from parental pressure in the past. So undoing that has let the creative juices flow. Creating boundaries for myself has let things push through."

Sawayama: "We’re still not where I want to be, but I think even since I started in music there’s so much more representation now."