I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in.

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

Part of me is probably more conservative than people realise. I like my old string quartets, I don't like music that's trippy for trippy's sake.

I find it very difficult to draw a line between what's sex and what isn't. It can be very, very sexy to drive a car, and completely unsexy to flirt with someone at a bar.

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.

I thought I could organise freedom/How Scandinavian of me.

If you want to make something happen that hasn't happened before , you've got to allow yourself to make a lot of mistakes.