And all of these writers offer me a greater understanding of what it is to be alive, and that is such an incredible thing art can do for other people. It made me want to try and get close to this strange, mysterious thing that people can do with words.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too.

I feel that my dreamscapes are part of my everyday life, and sometimes I can't tell the difference.

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.

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer.