“Albums are like diaries. You go through phases, technically and emotionally, and they reflect the state that you're in at the time.”

“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.”

“But I don't have a very good track record with royalty. My dress fell off in front of Prince Charles at the Prince's Trust, so I'm just living up to my reputation.”

“Clothes are such a strong part of who a human being is.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Gene Wilder is so funny.”

“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 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?”

“I definitely don't think of myself as being an influence.”

“I didn't really feel that there were any filler tracks on 'The Red Shoes,' but if I were to do that album now, I wouldn't make it so long.”

“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.”

“I don't aim for perfection. But I do want to try and come up with something interesting.”

“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 don't listen to my old stuff very often at all.”

“I don't read newspapers, and I've said I don't watch the news. I love books, but I don't read much. What I do is I get people to read to me, and I put the stories in my head.”

“I don't really see myself as a celebrity, but more as a sort of mitre.”

“I guess what all artists want is for their work to touch someone or for it to be thought provoking.”

“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.”

“I have a little boy, and I wanted to spend a lot of time with him.”

“I have to say I find it totally astounding that my albums do as well as they do. It's quite extraordinary, and it's actually very touching for me for the albums to be received with such warmth.”

“I hear odd tracks from my albums every now and again on the radio, or maybe a friend plays me something.”

“I listen to very little music, particularly contemporary. If I listen to it, it's going to be my own music, some arrangement or something. I spend so much time listening that the way I relax is by watching things, a comedy; that's my way to wind down.”

“I really love Hitchcock; I think he was a complete genius, to me one of the best directors. Such a sense of how to put things together.”

“I suppose I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person, and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I think it's important that things are flawed.”

“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.”

“I think quotes are very dangerous things.”

“I think snow is so evocative and has such a powerful atmosphere.”

“I think that there's always room for humour in music. It's something that always takes itself so seriously, which I think is a bit of a shame.”

“I think we all feel geeky at times, don't we? Isn't that all a part of the wonderful tapestry of life?”

“I used to enjoy bad television, like really bad quiz programmes or sitcoms.”

“I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being.”

“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 work in a very contained environment, usually.”

“If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time... evaporates.”

“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.”

“I'll always be tough on myself.”

“I'm a very strong person, and I think that's why, actually, I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature.'”

“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'm the shyest megalomaniac you're ever likely to meet.”

“In your teens, you get the physical puberty, and between 28 and 32, mental puberty. It does make you feel differently.”

“It's not important to me that people understand me.”

“It's not my ambition to be a big star.”

“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?”

“It's so fascinating to think about how each snowflake is completely individual - there are millions and millions of them, but each one is so unique.”

“It's so important to me to do the washing, do the Hoovering. I don't ever want to lose contact with that.”

“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.”

“My father was always playing the piano. He played all kinds of music - Gershwin, all kinds of stuff.”

“My first Top of the Pops I didn't want to do. I was terrified. I'd never done television before. Seeing the video afterwards was like watching myself die.”

“My life and my work are very interlocked. That's partly why I like to keep my private life private.”

“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.”

“Obviously I try to make the best music that I can, but after about two years of making an album, you start to worry: 'Is it going to come out all right? Is it all going to sound churned out?'”

“One of the main reasons for wanting to perform live again was to have contact with that audience.”

“Originally, when I wrote the song 'The Sensual World' I had used text from the end of 'Ulysses.' When I asked for permission to use the text, I was refused, which was disappointing.”

“People ask what I really did in the three years between 'The Dreaming' and 'Hounds of Love.' I spent it with my family, living a normal home life.”

“People said I couldn't gig, and I proved them wrong.”

“People weren't even aware that I wrote my own songs. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist.”

“Quite understandably, people think that if there's a six-year gap or whatever, that it's taken me six years to make the album. It's not really like that at all.”

“School was a very cruel environment, and I was a loner. But I learnt to get hurt, and I learnt to cope with it.”

“Since I was 17, I had been just making records and promoting them.”

“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.”

“Thanks to everyone who's encouraged and supported my work over the years.”

“That's what all art's about - a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries.”

“The freedom you feel when you're actually in control of your own music is fantastic.”

“The great thing about vinyl is that if you wanted to get a decent-sounding cut, you could really only have 20 minutes max on each side.”

“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.”

“There is a figure that is adored, but I'd question very strongly that it's me.”

“There's always ideas buzzing around, but it's whether they actually end up materialising into a song.”

“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.”

“We have such little mystery in our lives generally because of how we live now. I mean, of course, mystery is all around us, but the way we live our lives now, we're too busy to be bothered with it.”

“What I've tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else's mind, like in Wuthering Heights.”

“When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.”

“When your mother dies, you're not a little girl any more.”

“Whenever I see the news, it's always the same depressing things.”

“Writing, film, sculpture, music: it's all make-believe, really.”