Certainly in terms of my life - anybody's life - you go through death, childbirth and marriage, glory and defeat, and so on.

Every video I do is over budget by the time I walk on set. I am massively extravagant in my personal habits.

I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider. For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust. I've been hanging out a bit with Lou Reed, and he's the complete opposite. He's into technology and is kind of like a toddler, compared to me, who's like an old 19th-century widow or something.

I think I've done a pretty fantastic job, but of course I want to sell millions of records.

In the present world, this technological, psychotic, politicised, nonsensical world, you have to believe that the good guys are going to win! That evil will be banished somehow!

Prima Donna is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience.

To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.