In school, I guess I was a difficult, know-it-all type of student... I was always complaining that music education was too academic.

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.

Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times.

What comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.

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.

It takes a long time to fully become who you are.

I do try and wear stuff by unknown designers, and I make sure I pay because if nothing else I have money.