I'm not religious, I'm not romantic and I live purely by logic. I make every decision by logic and sometimes that leads me to the right and sometimes to the wrong decision.

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

People think I look odd onstage. But the way I deal with being incredibly nervous is by concentrating really hard.

When a song wants to be written, it will be written.

I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting

I don't have much to complain about in life, because I've lived a very privileged existence and continue to. I just think, What if I didn't have that confidence or strength of character, and I was left with certain perceptions of what a woman's place is in the world?

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.