I wish I could be more serious about painting. I think there may be something going on there and I should pursue it. I'm very old-fashioned - even with the music. I realize, while I have so much respect for the kookiness of people who go for it, who paint with their eyes closed, I am superclassical.

Music, for the moment, has been this hidden thing for me. For the first time, I am master of something. I am not used by someone else, like in movies or pictures, where you always have the happiness or disappointment of knowing it's you seen through someone else's point of view. You go to see a film and half of the pretty scenes are not in it-the ones you liked. Living with this frustration all the time, suddenly music came as the best thing for me at home, where no one can tell you anything.

Yeah, you always have to be there and remind people of you. It's complicated when you do music, or when you do anything in general. You need time. I don't know if it's because of the weather or what, but [Canadians] seem to have a relationship to time that I like very much.

I always lived with guitarists. When they would leave, I would just pick up their acoustic guitars and start doing finger picking and write.

Music came as the best thing for me at home, where no one can tell you anything. For years I was so closed, wanting to do it exactly like I had it in my head, because this would be the only place that was superpersonal.

My mother always spoke to me in English, so it's technically my maternal language, and it became a kind of private language - I was happy that I could speak in English to my mum and the majority of people wouldn't understand it.

Home has always been wherever I am. I'm not very attached to walls - or people, for that matter - so I've always loved travelling around. A book in my back pocket, a diary, and a pen is all I need to call any place home.