I find myself more affected by music the more I do it. Particularly when you're touring and you're in the bus and you're listening to loads of music. Life becomes far more dramatic, I guess - you're never in the same place, you're constantly meeting new people. You almost become more sensitized to music.

There's always a part of my brain saying: 'Stop getting comfortable. Don't relax.' Because I find it difficult to write when I'm happy. I have to go out there and get battered up and bruised to write anything. I have to feel something.

I just love to play music. I enjoy it more than anything. I enjoy it more than drinking with my friends in the pub. I'd much prefer to be playing live and playing the piano - playing is one of the most enjoyable things I do and I live for it. So it's very rare that I'd not be up for it. I'm very lucky to have something that I love so much; I don't know what I'd do without it.

You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.

I don't really like over-explaining the songs. Everyone constantly asks what the songs are about, and I think the thing is that the songs definitely all have stories in them; it's just nice to let people decide what they are. I think it's important that people hear it themselves rather than having me annotate it.

What ever your doing right now, whatever your thinking, or worrying about. stop. take a huge breathe in, and just enjoy being alive.

I think music moves me more than other people. I can hear a song and it can bring me to tears. It doesn't happen the whole time, but I find songwriting - songs - very, very moving. I always have and I don't think it's fading.