Basically what Salomé did with Rilke as a mentor was direct him toward the Russian Orthodox Church, so he could project his love of the divine feminine onto the Virgin Mary. She wanted him to stop the cycle of being disappointed by the ultimate humanity of women. She was like, "You don't want me, you want the Virgin Mary." It's kind of a mystical concept! She also changed Freud's opinion, a little bit too late, about the female psyche, which he had so wrong. If it had been better publicized, it would have changed Western society's perception of the female psyche, too.

I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.

No one starts playing my kind of music to make a fortune. But I do want to keep doing what I do and I do want to continue selling records. And I would, eventually, quite like some money.

I'm the first to admit that I'm still pretty young.

I remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

Why fear death? Be scared of living.