I think people in Great Britain are a bit jaded sometimes.

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

I think music is the most phenomenal platform for intellectual thought.

I've never experienced chronic poverty, but I know what it's like to live on £3 a week.

I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike.

I've never been a social person.

I don't want to be owned by a corporation and obliged to make a certain type of album. I want to be free.

I want people to understand me as a person with views, not just performing songs.

I'm a female but I have a masculine side and I'm not going to negate that part of myself.

I would like to see the gay population get on board with feminism. It's a beautiful organisation and they've done so much. It seems to me a no-brainer.

I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness but I can't speak on their behalf.

The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users.

Charity is a fine thing if it's meeting a gap where needs must be met and there are no other resources. But in the long term we need to support people into helping themselves.

Churches, depending on their policy, can do fantastic work with people in the community.

I've always tried to keep my integrity and keep my autonomy.

I don't have any interest to go to Israel. I don't think I'd ever have a cause to go.

Life expectancy in many parts of Africa can be something around the age of thirty five to thirty eight. I mean you're very fortunate if you live to that age. In fact when I went to Uganda for the first time one of the things that occurred to me was that I saw very few elderly people.

Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

I will go out of my way to avoid the shopping crowds and the extreme consumerism - I hate all that.

As a creative person, you just put something out into the consciousness of the society you live in.

The inner world is very potent for me - I don't ascribe to any God or Jesus or Buddha - I just have a sense of it and revere it along with the natural world and human consciousness.

I understand what it is for a woman to want to protect their children and give them the best they can.

I love to be individual, to step beyond gender.

It's hard to tell how far women's individuality has come in the past twenty years.

There is a big difference between what I do onstage and what I do in my private life. I don't put my living room on magazine pages.

I'm not intensely private - I talk a great deal about my life and my work - I just don't play the game to excess.

Motherhood was the great equaliser for me; I started to identify with everybody.

As a mother, you have that impulse to wish that no child should ever be hurt, or abused, or go hungry, or not have opportunities in life.

The word feminism needs to be taken back. It needs to be reclaimed in a way that is inclusive of men.

Men need to understand, and women too, what feminism is really about.

I don't think feminism is about the exclusion of men but their inclusion... we must face and address those issues, especially to include younger men and boys.

I'm appalled the word feminism has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture.

I have always been a very visual person and a keen observer.

For me, pointing and clicking my phone is absolutely fine. People say that isn't the art of photography but I don't agree.

I also started writing songs because I had this burning activity in my heart and had to express myself.

I am fascinated by history and particularly the Victorian era.

I like where I live here, in London.

We all fight over what the label 'feminism' means but for me it's about empowerment. It's not about being more powerful than men - it's about having equal rights with protection, support, justice. It's about very basic things. It's not a badge like a fashion item.

I've thought about what is an alternative word to feminism. There isn't one. It's a perfectly good word. And it can't be changed.

I have a lot to be grateful for.

If we value what we've inherited for free - from other women - surely it's right morally and ethically for us to wake up and say, 'I'm a feminist. '

If people like your music, you can't guarantee they're going to love you.

Please don't ask me for the actual answer to anything, because I don't have it. Because all I do is look at stuff and ask questions. What can I say? I just think the world's barking mad. Look, I'm not an expert. I'm just an ordinary person.

I think life on the road really suits very egotistical men. It's set up for kings.

Actually, I'm quite a domesticated person. I love the little things of home.

Fame for fame's sake is toxic - some people want that, with no boundaries. It's unhealthy.

I was born in 1954. My parents were brought up in the war years, and life was hard.

I'm not a saint. I'm not an angel. I'm a human being.

You just decide what your values are in life and what you are going to do, and then you feel like you count, and that makes life worth living. It makes my life meaningful.

Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don't even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges.