People are always going to need physicality; they're going to want to meet other people even more. I've got faith in the physical angle. People have their needs. They won't forget about them.

National Geographic contacted me about getting on their label, and I was like, 'Wow, I want to be label mates with the sharks and lemurs!'

I've never done an album like this. With Biophilia, I was being like Kofi Annan - I had to be the pacifist to try to unite the impossible. Maybe that was a strange, personal job between me and myself, to show how overreaching I was being as a woman. The only way I could express that was by comparing it to the universe.

People ask me questions like, "Oh, you look so theatrical in your photographs. Is that what you're like when you walk down the street?" It's like, "Of course not." It's such a silly question - it's like being theatrical is a crime.

I guess I'm quite used to not being understood rather than being understood.

As a singer-songwriter, what I do is write about how the human feels.

Icelandic people are really educated. But maybe we are at where the people in the States were 50 years ago, where they think that stuff that isn't done with a hammer or physical power is not a job. It's that backwards.