I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.

I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.

I know how ridiculous this sounds because of the job I do but I don't believe in romanticism and make-believe.

Age is relative. Experience is relative. And I think often intensity is confused with maturity.

I'd like to make music for as long as I can; it feels like something I need to do.

The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.

I read a lot by female psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé, who wrote prominent biographies of Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud because she studied with all of them. She had this unbelievable insight into contemporary psychoanalysis. What is so interesting is that she wrote her life, and she knew that her life would be about these men, and it didn't stop her from leading an incredibly successful academic career. But her strange self-awareness that she was going to bookmark these men's lives is really interesting to me.