“'The Haunted Man' is about communication barriers between men and women, and in that song it's a woman's wait for her husband to come back from war. The vision for me was of a group of men and wome...”

“I was a nursery school teacher, and I worked with youth groups. I loved that job. It was exhausting, but you got a lot back - all their purity and insight and innocence is so on the surface, and th...”

“In the music industry, intelligence in women is undervalued.”

“I could talk for ages about how women are amazing, but essentially we shouldn't be manipulated by the media's expectations of our bodies. I'd recommend every woman to read 'Women Who Run with the W...”

“I live in a Moomin house in East London which I fill with blankets and nice crockery and get people round for dinner. When you travel a lot, you feel rootless and adrift - this is my sanctuary, whe...”

“I had Hallowe'en parties every year, as it was my birthday five days before. My parents would actually put prosthetic noses on, and my dad would wear a top-hat and tails, put on a fake curly mousta...”

“Its hard to stay up. Its been a long long dayAnd you've got the sandman at your door. But hang on, leave the TV on and lets do it anyway.Its ok. You can always sleep through work tomorrow. Ok?Hey, ...”

“The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek.”

“Dont get stressed over the little things and make sure you live life to the fullest.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”