“Age is relative. Experience is relative. And I think often intensity is confused with maturity.”

“I feel increasingly like age is very irrelevant. Quite often, cynicism is confused with wisdom, and my scorn is confused with a knowing, which I don't have.”

“I feel sometimes that I'm in a constant state of being lost in translation, and I guess that why I write songs.”

“I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.”

“I just think of everything I do and how happy it will make me to do it. I don't like having my photograph taken, for instance, so I don't do that often.”

“I know how ridiculous this sounds because of the job I do but I don't believe in romanticism and make-believe.”

“I know there are lots of positives in the evolution of technology, but I also think it will be responsible for the end of a unique character, of a specific kind of geographical culture. The world is getting so small, and mass production is getting so big. Everything is in danger of becoming the same.”

“I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.”

“I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone.”

“I think your most intimate thoughts are only honest when they're in your head.”

“I'd like to make music for as long as I can; it feels like something I need to do.”

“I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.”

“I'm a lot more observational than personal in my writing. My writing is mostly a lot of questions without answers.”

“I'm a songwriter, and I understand artistic licence. We can embellish, go on little journeys and explore our inner selves. It can be quite self-indulgent.”

“I'm incredibly neurotic and a control freak. I like the thought that if there's going to be anyone to blame it's going to be me.”

“I'm not religious, I'm not romantic and I live purely by logic. I make every decision by logic and sometimes that leads me to the right and sometimes to the wrong decision.”

“I'm reluctantly interested in love and helplessly interested in logic and yet they're so conflicting. And they're both necessary for a happy balance, a happy existence... I think.”

“It is quite hard to relax in London. I always say I'd move somewhere quieter, but I am a bit of a confirmed urbanite now - it crept up on me without me noticing. I always think that I function quite well on my own, unusually so, but then I'm reminded how important people are to me.”

“It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not.”

“I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.”

“I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.”

“My reaction to everything in life is when it gets a bit complicated to water it down and make it simple again.”

“People don't appreciate music any more. They don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork.”

“When I'm singing I feel like I'm talking to someone. I'm in conversation when I perform - either with myself or with whomever is listening.”

“Womanhood is something you don't consider until it hits you.”

“You are what you can prove you've done. That's how people judge you.”