- I started off singing in church as a child. The sound of voices coming together, that was my first moment of touching something outside of myself.
- I did everything backward, but everyone's been so supportive. I'm not really sure what's next. There is no plan.
- I've got my ideal job. I like to sing, I like to dance, I like to bang drums and dress up, and someone pays me - it's incredible.
- I'm a choir girl gone horribly, desperately wrong.
- Ceremonials is a big-sounding album? I guess there's no getting around that. I'm attracted to that sense of being overwhelmed by something. If there's a chance that I might respond that way while these songs are playing around me, then someone else might too. And that's surely the point, isn't it?
- I ended up deciding to drink less while I was touring. It was for my voice. It's really hard to sing and keep up the pace that we were going at. It's OK for the first bits when you don't know where you're going. But now that I have more of an idea of the longevity of it, I'd like to have a career like PJ Harvey or Björk, who are still producing albums and have these voices. I realized if I wanted to have a career like theirs, I'd have to temper my indulgences.
- I try to write lyrics so that they won't age, which sort of leaves you with the big subjects like death and love and sex and violence.
- I think I got introduced to Tom Waits and Kate Bush at around the same time, when I was 18 or 19. My friend at school introduced me to Hounds of Love. I liked the drums, and the freedom of expression. You get an amazing sense of things being free, but it's all very tightly-wound - quite an uptight sort of sexuality. I love that juxtaposition. But yeah, I'm obsessed with a good drum sound. And the male choir [on Hello Earth] was a stroke of genius. What I would give for a male voice choir...
- My voice is the only instrument I actually feel skilled at! You know, singing opera helped me train my voice and improve my range, but I hated the attitude behind it. It was restrictive and nerve-racking - just the idea of being judged for your singing! When I was 14, I started smoking in secret - like, 'I'll show you, I'll ruin my voice!' It was the stupidest rebellion ever.
- I grew up with a Little House on the Prairie fetish. I was obsessed. I lived in South London, so there were no prairies.
- The closest relationship I've had for my whole life is with my music.
- I'm afraid of flying. There have been so many kind stewardesses who have held my hand during turbulence, and I had to write them letters just to say, "Thank you."
- It's very hard to accept love. If you've been denying yourself nourishment in some way, you also have a tendency to deny yourself emotional nourishment.
- I don't think it was helpful for a super-sensitive person to become famous. I'm always saying to my manager, "I just don't want to get any more famous than this. OK?" She's like, "It's not gonna happen now if it hasn't happened already."
- [on quitting her drinking habit and breaking her foot at Coachella] I'm quite shy, really-that's probably why I used to drink a lot. But I don't anymore. When I finally took time off to make this new record, I had time to strengthen. And when I was coming back into the fray, I really didn't want to lose that. I thought I could go dive-bomb back into it, but look what happened. I dived into it and literally broke myself.
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