I'm maybe not so anxious to be a successful pop artist. Of course I want people to like my music, but I know what the price of success can be, too. Basically, I'm happy as long as I can keep my freedom, so I'm so happy with the way things are at the moment. I get to be hands-on with details in every aspect of what I'm doing, but I also get to perform for a big audience.

You apply the skills you use to produce your own book to make an anthology. Shaping. Rhythm.

The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you choose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many.

I always felt like I could combine good pop songs that are easy for people to like with a real person and a real mind and integrity.

All the big pop acts that I've been into over the years - whether it's ABBA or Prince - managed to combine amazing melodies and honest human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot about the fact that pop music can do both of those things.

Prince is king to me. As this half-naked, short black guy who looked like a girl in the 70s and 80s, he was talking about women in a way that was very unusual because he didn't objectify them.

Sometimes I think that everyone has a tragedy waiting for them, that the people buying milk in their pajamas or picking their noses at stoplights could be only moments away from disaster. That everyone's life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary - a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.