I don't hold onto anything, because it's a waste of energy to do so, really. There's nothing that I can do about the way people want to write about me. I just try and concentrate on my work and do that as well as I can.

I'm always writing, the past 10 years. A lot has changed, in that it's something I do every day.

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.

I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.

If I ever meet a writer or a painter, I don't presuppose that they are like the work they are presenting.

Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply.

When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track.