In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life.

I knew what I didn't want to do- that's always my starting point. The starting point is always that I don't want to repeat myself. Or I try my best not to, with varying degrees of success.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

I don't like things to be handed to me on a plate; that means nothing. I like to go through layers of unraveling and every time I listen to something, it makes me feel something different. Now I'm aware of the conflict that's going on, but at the time I just let what was happening happen.