During the songs, you transcend yourself. The best way to be in the performance is to be without pause and be essentially in the moment, in that moment of expression.

But I was always much more interested in reading fashion magazines than I was music magazines when I was a teenager. Just that sense of romanticism and escapism and the dream of it has always been quite alluring to me, as well as that sense of becoming a character through clothes.

A lot of the songs on the new album are about imaginary things, things that you can't touch - ghosts and rumors, my dead grandmother, things visiting you in a dream.

Love is horrible. I mean, when you're in love, it's like a sickness. Such madness.

When you're heartbroken, you're at your most creative - you have to channel all your energies into something else to not think about it. Contentment is a creativity killer, but don't worry - I'm very capable of making myself discontented.

I think an encore is perfectly acceptable, but I find it so weird when people do two or three.

I am obsessed with the whole Victoriana thing, the whole Jack the Ripper London era, the grayness of it, the haunted feeling of it, all ancient and bloody.