To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

When I was really young I used to collect frog spawn. I made a pond out of an old sink and I loved to spend hours watching the frogs grow.

My manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it's true.

At about the age of ten, my friends and I discovered the joys of sitting in graveyards drinking merrydown cider and kissing and stealing our elder siblings' records.

I'm not comfortable holidaying in other people's poverty.

I want it to be more universal than that - like a painter doesn't have to explain his life story away to justify his painting.

I get told I'm a confessional songwriter, which gets on my tits because I think of negative connotations attached to the word "confessional". I don't like the idea of songwriting being therapy. I don't want to put myself so directly in the foreground.