I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.

I'm on fire when I'm singing, I'm completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It's a very special thing.

I am someone who really does believe very strongly in the Holy Spirit. I feel I'm someone who, since I was a very, very small child, of being engaged in a very strong relationship with the Holy Spirit.

We're exposing our minors to abuse by the fact that they leave the radio on in the car and let them listen to the news on the way to school. Or the fact that it's shown on the news, the children can see Gaddafi's face and his glorious Technicolor clothes getting shot off on the news or on the newspaper shelves. In the shelves of the shops where all the sex magazines are consciously put at the top, if they're consciously put at the top, that must mean the violence is all put at the bottom consciously.

In my belief, there's one spirit. I prefer to call it the Holy Spirit. I don't think it matters if you call it God or Allah or Jesus or Fred or David or too early in the morning or whatever.

There's a standard of songwriting that, when you start immersing yourself in those types of songs, it raises your own bar as a songwriter. There's also simplicity in the songwriting. It's much harder to be simple than it is to be complicated.

I have always had a good functioning in my artistic life, but I had problems mostly in my private life, I got very angry with my boyfriends and stuff...I would probably have good reasons to be angry but the volume would be too high, just getting to some level of wounding that perhaps was not appropriate to the actual offence committed.