I think I have a vested interest in thinking that the lyrics are important, but I think for us it's important that we all write things that mean something to us, and I think we're not really in the business of writing la-la-love-you chart pop songs. It needs to have a personal pulling in the gut for me, to want to write anything about it.

I've been in bands since I was about fifteen, so there are probably quite a lot of terrible teenage songs kicking about somewhere. I'm not sure what it was about to be honest, I think it was probably just something along the lines of teen angst.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

I don't know Justin Bieber so I wouldn't want to marry a man I don't know.

I think in reading a few sentences of text you can just tell the tone, and that's something I love in prose writers.

A good song to one person could just be something mediocre to somebody else. It's always strange thinking about how songs connect with people.

My dissertation was on the idea of feminine-themed women's magazines, so like how the ideal woman is put across by women's magazines.