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

i thrive best hermit style. with a beard and a pipe.

It's invisible, what women do. It's not rewarded as much.

I'm not very good at doing two things at the same time. I've never been good at the walk and bubblegum thing. I've been doing this 16 hours a day. I haven't had a day off. But it's very exciting, too, just to meet all these people doing really fertile stuff. It's sort of where I come from anyway, hanging out with people who believe in something incredible.

In 2008, I was more just thinking about using the touchscreen for writing the songs. From there I started thinking about how I visualised music.

I have to re-create the universe every morning when I wake up, and kill it in the evening.

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.