I think every year brings unknowns that you have to deal with and handle, confront and embrace.

I don't expect people to get me. That would be quite arrogant. I think there are a lot of people out there in the world that nobody gets.

When I met Apple, I made it very clear that I am an old punk and I have never done commercials or been sponsored. And I wasn't after their money.

I guess I'm quite used to not being understood rather than being understood.

What probably confuses people is they know a lot about me, but it quite pleases me that there's more they don't know.

The reason I do photographs is to help people understand my music, so it's very important that I am the same, emotionally, in the photographs as in the music. Most people's eyes are much better developed than their ears. If they see a certain emotion in the photograph, then they'll understand the music.

Believe it or not, I'm a bit clumsy with technology. It's probably why I'm so excited about the touchscreen - even an idiot can use it!

I bought a laptop in 1999, and it was quite liberating, because I could make a lot of my own decisions.

In '96, I was in a very specific place with my own music - I was only listening to beats. You would come to my house, and I would just play beats all day.

When I was 20, political music was the uncoolest thing on earth.

I mostly write on my own, walking, outside.

I get highs, to be totally honest, in second-hand shops. My hunting instinct, I expect, really kicks in.

I'm just like anybody. I have my ups and downs.

I find most children quite inspiring.

We didn't really have television when I was a kid. Around 30, I discovered films and started systematically catching up. I collect interesting documentaries and films, and watch a few nights a week.

It would be flattering to be thought of as someone who celebrated life.

Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don't have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people. We don't even have an army. So it's sort of like an all-around good, innocent place.

Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I get so much grounding from Iceland because I know it's always going to be there. I have a very happy, healthy relationship with the country, so it's really easy to go everywhere because I always have Iceland to go back to.

I'm not interested in politics. I lose interest the microsecond it ceases to be emotional, when something becomes a political movement. What I'm interested in is emotions.

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

While you're setting something up that's educational for yourself, you have an opportunity to teach others at the same time.

In order to actually have a touchscreen in front of me and somehow still be connected to nature, I needed to be able to incorporate natural elements into the song structures. Because that's always been my song-writing accompaniment: nature.

When I was a punk teenager, I rebelled because lots of people in Iceland think that foreigners are evil and that if you don't wear woolen hats and eat sheep, you're betraying your heritage.

I went through an anti-Establishment phase and thought we should get everything for free.

I think religion is a mistake - I'm exhausted by its self-righteousness. I think atheists should start screaming for attention like religious folks do.

The funeral business is so manipulative emotionally. I would want to be thrown into the sea or burned - something that's not a big hassle.

I think connecting natural elements and musicology is probably pretty idiosyncratic of me, so it is hard to imagine anyone else going down that route.

Nature has always been important to me. It has always been in my music.

In Reykjavik, Iceland, where I was born, you are in the middle of nature surrounded by mountains and ocean. But you are still in a capital in Europe. So I have never understood why I have to choose between nature or urban.

Nature hasn't gone anywhere. It is all around us, all the planets, galaxies and so on. We are nothing in comparison.

Since I was a kid, I always wanted to figure out how to make a bass line that was a pendulum - like, gravity would control it, and then you could make it play different notes.

I went to music school, and I guess I was a difficult, know-it-all type of student.

The good thing about Pro Tools is you can actually hear what you're working on, so it doesn't just become this intellectual idea. But Pro Tools can be dangerous, too. It can make things sterile.

With my projects, I really like the extreme high-tech stuff, but I also like the other end, the acoustic things. So it seems like those meet on an iPad, where you make shapes but the sounds coming out of it are really acoustic.

Most people in Iceland are blonde and blue-eyed. I was nicknamed 'China girl' in school 'cos they thought I looked Asian.

In elections in Iceland, I have always been an abstainer. It seems like politics is such a small bundle of self-important people, who don't have much to do with things I'm interested in.

Living in a capital in Europe but still surrounded by mountains and ocean, my relationship to music was strongest walking to school and back. I would sing to myself and very quickly started mapping out my melodies to landscapes - at the time I just thought it was very matter of fact, a common thing to do.

With a small town mentality, you make a decision very early on as to whether you are going to do everything by the book or just go your own way and not care.

There is such a big chunk of me that is David Attenborough. I think he is my biggest inspiration.

The English eat all sorts of birds - pigeons, ducks, sparrows - but if you tell them you eat puffin, you might as well come from Mars.

Come on, I'm from Iceland; I don't do hip-hop.

I do love one-upmanship sometimes, like when you see kids breakdancing and who can do the best tricks. It's common, it's in our nature as animals, like the birds of paradise who've got the best feathers and that sort of stuff. But it's fun when it's impulsive and it's about fun.

I started an all-girl punk band when I was 14, and I was the drummer, not the singer.

Solar power, wind power, the way forward is to collaborate with nature - it's the only way we are going to get to the other end of the 21st century.