I don't aim for perfection. But I do want to try and come up with something interesting.
Touring is an incredibly isolated situation. I don't know how people tour for years on end. You find a lot of people who can't stop touring, and it's because they don't know how to come back into life. It's sort of unreal.
It's not my ambition to be a big star.
When I started music, I think it was responsible for keeping me sane, because training as a dancer really kept me in good spirits amid all the crazy stuff that happened when I first became popular.
I work in a very contained environment, usually.
The more I got into presenting things to the world, the further it was taking me away from what I was, which was someone who just used to sit quietly at a piano and sing and play. It became very important to me not to lose sight of that.
I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.
Thanks to everyone who's encouraged and supported my work over the years.
I wasn't an easy, happy-go-lucky girl because I used to think about everything so much, and I think I probably still do.
I had an incredibly full life with my imagination: I used to have all sorts of trolls and things; I had a wonderful world around my toys and invented people. I don't mean I had imaginary friends; I just had this big imagination thing going on. I didn't need any imaginary friends, because I had so much other stuff going on.
My friends sometimes used to ignore me completely, and that would really upset me badly.
In your teens, you get the physical puberty, and between 28 and 32, mental puberty. It does make you feel differently.
I was aware of a lot of my friends being into things I wasn't into. Like sarcasm. It had never been a part of my family - they still don't use sarcasm.
I am just trying to be a good, protective mother. I want to give Bertie as normal a childhood as possible while preserving his privacy.
I'm not sure there are a lot of things I'd want a manager for. I suppose I feel that at least the decisions I make are coming from me, and I'm not put into a situation that I wouldn't want to be in.
I have a theory that there are still parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age of between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up.
There's always ideas buzzing around, but it's whether they actually end up materialising into a song.
I'm the shyest megalomaniac you're ever likely to meet.
I've read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don't think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time.
I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.
For the last 12 years, I've felt really privileged to be living such a normal life. It's so a part of who I am.
As we become this one global culture, in some ways it's things like the weather and nature that still hold our culture as unique to where we are.
My music can be a little obscure. It does worry me that the music might be too complicated for people to take in - that they have to work too hard at it.
I'll always be tough on myself.
I think quotes are very dangerous things.
I don't know about hiding away, but I really only like to present myself when I'm working on something - it's more my work I like to present to the world rather than myself.
I do have the odd dream where I'm on stage and I've completely forgotten what I'm meant to be performing - so they are more nightmares than dreams.
Writing, film, sculpture, music: it's all make-believe, really.
If you believe in what you do and you really want to be in music, just stick at it. It's always a learning process. Enjoy it because I think making music is a privilege, really. In an ideal world, it should also always be fun. As much as possible, make it fun.
Clothes are such a strong part of who a human being is.
It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?
There is a figure that is adored, but I'd question very strongly that it's me.
In a popular medium, you're going to get loads of stuff that is trite, but there'll also be some really special moments.
My parents weren't keen on the giving up of school at the beginning to go into singing and dancing, but once they saw I was serious about it, they gave support. I was quite stubborn about my decision, and in the end, they realised it was for the best.
School was a very cruel environment, and I was a loner. But I learnt to get hurt, and I learnt to cope with it.
I think it's almost a law of nature that there are only certain things that hit an emotive space, and that's what was always special for me about music: it made me feel something.
Sometimes when I'm going to the supermarket to get the coffee and cat litter, I get freaked out and see all these people staring, and you turn around and there's, like, 40 people all looking at you... and when you go around the corner, they're all following you! You start freaking out like a trapped animal.
I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being.
I understand that people want to just listen to a track and put it on their iPod, and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but why can't that exist hand in hand with an album? They're such different experiences.
I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.
People said I couldn't gig, and I proved them wrong.
When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.
I have a little boy, and I wanted to spend a lot of time with him.
I could find faults with all my albums because that's just a part of being an artist - it's hard being a human being, isn't it?
What I've tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else's mind, like in Wuthering Heights.
I guess what all artists want is for their work to touch someone or for it to be thought provoking.
I think snow is so evocative and has such a powerful atmosphere.
Since I was 17, I had been just making records and promoting them.
For me, having a child is a really great responsibility because you've got something there that is depending on you for information and love until a certain age when it goes to school.
