I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it's a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

I've just put my heart and soul in a song and need at least a week to recover.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn't feel like it's about me. Time created a distance.

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.