Social paralysis is strong and stands firmly in the way of change on the ground level. As allies, we have to prepare ourselves to step into the fire when necessary, even - and especially - when said fire is merely a still-lit cigarette tossed carelessly onto the street.

If I was a supervillain, I'd create this universal, cosmic rule where every time an old, shitty, right-wing white man says something unsavory about a young woman, he would just get the clap immediately.

The best pop music is the songs that a group of people can dance to, but you can also listen to in your bed and cry. That's something obviously that The Beatles started and... so having that darkness there opens another door.

I don't ever want to do anything that's obvious, and I also want to find ways to do things that are extremely new and exciting and can make sense in bizarre ways. I always want things to make sense in really bizarre ways.

Glee is one of the very few mainstream outlets that is giving a voice to communities of people that don't necessarily have a loud voice, specifically the gay community. It gives a really positive and forward statement.

The same way all the people I love factor in—my parents, my sister, my girlfriend [Lena Dunham], my best friend, all the people I love are always right there. I don't have a lot of people in my life, but there's a small group of people that I don't like to do things without.

You have to look at the body of work you're doing and then figure out the best way for people to digest it. You want people to come in and listen to all of it and understand the entire project. I think it's bad when everyone's like, This is how you have to do it.

Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can.

As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.

Everyone wants to get better. You go through life, you want to shift and change and get better. No one ever says, I'm better. They say, I wanna get better.

I think what's cool about about going on a co-headline tour is everyone's bringing a huge show, so it's not like opening band, opening band, then here's the big show. It's like two big shows.

I think that everyone at any age should ask themselves, 'where do I want to be today, where do I want to be tomorrow, and where do I want to be in a hundred years?' We all have clear answers to those questions. We only have so much time. It's a real shame if we don't spend our lives trying to do that.

Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as 'gay'? If we don't, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting.

My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.

It probably all started with The Beatles, and then I guess it goes out from there. Springsteen... Fleetwood Mac... I mean, that's all so inherent in us that when we're making records now, we take a lot from the artists who are around us.