Everything's very perfectly balanced; for all the horrible things in the world there's lots of good things.

I would say a lot of the emotion in what I do is a sort of a thankfulness for those energies being around, because there's been points in my life when they weren't around, and it's a real sort of miserable existence.

When I smile at the audience, I'm not smiling because I was told that you're supposed to smile to the audience. I smile because they're all smiling at me, and it's a great feeling to see all these happy people out there, and it makes me happy to see them happy.

For me, living and making music, they're one thing. It's not like a job that I go to a studio to do, or a chore that I have to get myself in the mood to do, or something. It's the thing that I need to do every day.

What really helps me is being able to record my albums at home - I have more fun experimenting that way, as opposed to working with an engineer, in which case I have to deal with the humiliation of doing take after take, and that can get frustrating.

Music has always carried me through times of loneliness. So when I make music, I like it to make people who listen to it feel like they have a friend who reveals something personal to them, rather than trying to be like a god up on a pedestal

I find that the best way to do things is to constantly move forward and to never doubt anything and keep moving forward, if you make a mistake say you made a mistake.