Realize that everyone that you think is perfect feels like they're not good enough, too.
— Alessia Cara
I've always been self-conscious about my personality.
The definition of being a feminist is equality, and if you're not a feminist at this point, then what are you really promoting?
When you're from an unknown place, I think it's hard for you to believe it's possible. You think you have to go to L.A. or New York to make it, but I don't think that's true. I'm glad to be an example that you can make it from where you are. All you need is talent and hard work.
I loved the Black Eyed Peas. I was obsessed with them, and they were my favorite group ever, and Amy Winehouse, as well; I love her.
Once you put songs out, they're not yours anymore. They're everyone else's.
The fact that there's people out there that care about what I'm eating for breakfast or care about a tweet that I posted in 2012 that they pulled up because they were searching on my Twitter and things like that - it's hard to understand, because it's just me, and I just think, 'What's so interesting about me?'
I feel like I'm in my own head a lot; it just feels amazing, but scary, weird and confusing.
If Ed Sheeran covered my songs, I would die. That would be unbelievable.
It's hard to consider myself one when a lot of my fans and people who are calling me a role model are people my age and sometimes older than me. I feel like they're at the same walk of life that I'm in right now, and they can probably teach me things about life, too.
I think the media can definitely show more diversity - different sizes of women, different colours of women, just more diversity in general.
'Wild Things' is saying, 'I don't have to belong anywhere. This is where I belong.' It's a place in the back of my mind that I created, and it's cool, and I love it here.
I'd like to shut off all the noise and allow people to be creative without all the judgments and standards that we think we have to follow.
I always get criticized for my clothing because I like wearing jeans and T-shirts. There's nothing wrong with dressing sexy. It's just I don't want to be anything that I'm not. I'm not here to be a fashion icon. I am here to make songs.
Having a mom as a hairdresser was really awesome: I was always her test dummy. I've had every style, every color you could imagine.
As a kid, my parents would always listen to a lot of Beatles, Queen, Elvis. My mom was born and raised in Italy, and my dad was born in Canada and moved back and forth between Canada and Italy, so they would also listen to all the big Italian stars like Eros Ramazzotti, Gigi D'Alessio, Tiziano Ferro, Laura Pausini.
I've never been one to crave attention, which I know means that this is probably the worst career to pick. I get anxious even when people come up to me for pictures sometimes. That's the one thing that makes me hesitant about my future. But I love music too much to not do it.
We all just need to love ourselves and believe in ourselves.
I never thought I'd have a career because of YouTube.
Maybe I'm not a typical pop star, but I don't think there's a mould for a pop star or singer. You can do whatever you want.
I do feel pressure from the outside world a little bit just because everybody wants new music, which is really nice. It just proves that everybody likes what I'm doing. But at the same time, I feel like it's important to just chill and experience things and really make the songs true to me.
I'm not a fitness model; I'm just a singer. If people focus on that, that's what I care about.
Success is when you see something, and you say, 'I want to do that,' and then you do it. It's being happy with what you do and doing what you love every day.
It's amazing: it's so cool being from Brampton, Ontario, and being able to travel the world and being embraced by so many countries.
Throughout my high school years, I was very quiet, I didn't have many friends. I distanced myself from a lot of people.
I feel New York is too crazy for me, especially when you go to Times Square.
I don't wear a lot of makeup ever, even when I do interviews or when I'm on TV. I just keep it me, and I think it's important to show people I'm a regular person and regular people are beautiful, too.
I think we all have the right to feel 100 percent beautiful and 100 percent confident without pleasing anybody 'cause we're not here for anybody else.
This industry kind of forces you to grow up very quickly.
I would never wear anything because someone told me to.
I am stubborn enough to know not to change myself.
I want to show people that I am comfortable enough to go on national television and just be myself.
I'd never make something pointless that I don't believe in. I don't think I could do it.
I wasn't even popular at school.
You don't always have to be popular and do things everyone else is doing.
There's something so beautiful in a woman who loves her body and is confident.
When you give your all as an artist, and all people can talk about is what pants you're wearing, it's really frustrating.
I would love to host 'Saturday Night Live.' That's one of my goals in life - just putting that out there. I don't know if I'm funny enough, but we'll see.
I never really necessarily liked being quiet.
I'm here to make music; I'm not here be a fashion model.
I think all teenagers feel a lot of things at once; everything's going crazy in our brain.
I don't really think I got the full high school experience, only because when I got to high school for the first year, it was grades 9-10. We didn't have older grades. But besides that, it was normal. It was a regular public school. We didn't have much going on. It wasn't too crazy.
I actually didn't grow up watching 'Degrassi,' but I saw the commercials and knew the characters. I didn't realize that Drake was the guy from 'Degrassi.' I had to piece it together and go, 'Oh! He's Aubrey Graham.'
I keep my hair curly and natural because I really just wanna show who I am.
We should just know that we can all create this special, safe place within ourselves that we can feel comfortable in and that doesn't necessarily have to be with other people.
When I was shopping around trying to get signed, I made it a point to say, 'This is who I am.' I dress the way I normally dress, and I just wanted to find a label that would accept me for that.
If I'm kind of an outsider, it just happened that way, and people responded to it.
I want 'Scars to Your Beautiful' to reach different types of women. The girl I am talking about, it's me, it's you - it's every girl who has struggled with feeling not good enough. I want to talk about all the different extremes that girls go through to feel beautiful.
I didn't start writing songs, honestly, until I started making my album. I was always doing poetry, but I never thought I could write songs. I discouraged myself and thought it was so hard. But starting this process and learning just what it is to be a songwriter and performer taught me that you don't have to feel discouraged about anything.
When I write, I like squeezing as many words as possible into each bar - I've listened to the Fugees and Lauryn Hill for as long as I can remember, so probably a big chunk of it subconsciously comes from that.
