You know when people smile too much? It's painful. I find it really painful. Happy is not very reliable. I'm trying to live like, um, with a fierce calm.

We all get intimidated by showing ourselves, for whatever reason, we think, If I really show who I am, and someone goes [pfftt] then it's gonna crush me. Well, it's not gonna crush me. It doesn't crush you if somebody does that- somebody will do that. Many times. And once you accept that that's not why you're doing it, you're doing it because that's your form of expression.

I use innocence in my demeanor like a Venus flytrap.

I like involved projects. I'm driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.

Healing for me is being able to sit next to the butcher and say 'Yes, I’m sitting next to the butcher now,' instead of saying 'there is no butcher'.

Operation Peter Pan spanned from 1960-62 whereby over 14,000 children were sent away from their families in Cuba, some never to reunite again. Pan Am flights took the children to Miami FL, 'Never-Never Land', and the children became known as the 'Peter Pans.' I wrote this song for my daughter, and it is sung for all the daughters and mothers, fathers and brothers who felt this pain of separation all because of governments and their politics.

I don't feel I'm as good a mum as my mum was.