School was a very cruel environment, and I was a loner. But I learnt to get hurt, and I learnt to cope with it.

I love being with my friends, relaxing and talking.

Touring is an incredibly isolated situation. I don't know how people tour for years on end. You find a lot of people who can't stop touring, and it's because they don't know how to come back into life. It's sort of unreal.

I didn't really feel that there were any filler tracks on 'The Red Shoes,' but if I were to do that album now, I wouldn't make it so long.

It's not important to me that people understand me.

My parents weren't keen on the giving up of school at the beginning to go into singing and dancing, but once they saw I was serious about it, they gave support. I was quite stubborn about my decision, and in the end, they realised it was for the best.

That's what all art's about - a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries.

It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?

I don't really see myself as a celebrity, but more as a sort of mitre.

My music can be a little obscure. It does worry me that the music might be too complicated for people to take in - that they have to work too hard at it.

Writing, film, sculpture, music: it's all make-believe, really.

I think it's important that things are flawed.

I've read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don't think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time.

The more I got into presenting things to the world, the further it was taking me away from what I was, which was someone who just used to sit quietly at a piano and sing and play. It became very important to me not to lose sight of that.

Quite understandably, people think that if there's a six-year gap or whatever, that it's taken me six years to make the album. It's not really like that at all.

I don't aim for perfection. But I do want to try and come up with something interesting.

I think snow is so evocative and has such a powerful atmosphere.

I was writing from the age of 10, and I was never really into going to discos and dances and stuff. I never told anyone at school that I did that because I feared it would alienate me even more.

The freedom you feel when you're actually in control of your own music is fantastic.

Since I was 17, I had been just making records and promoting them.

In your teens, you get the physical puberty, and between 28 and 32, mental puberty. It does make you feel differently.

Clothes are such a strong part of who a human being is.

Whenever I see the news, it's always the same depressing things.

The music industry is in such poor shape; it's in a really bad way, and a lot of people in the industry are very depressed.

I'll always be tough on myself.

I have this desire in the back of my mind now of making music and film at the same time - putting the two together.

There is a figure that is adored, but I'd question very strongly that it's me.

My father was always playing the piano. He played all kinds of music - Gershwin, all kinds of stuff.

I work in a very contained environment, usually.

I think that there's always room for humour in music. It's something that always takes itself so seriously, which I think is a bit of a shame.

I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.

I used to enjoy bad television, like really bad quiz programmes or sitcoms.

People weren't even aware that I wrote my own songs. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist.

I hear odd tracks from my albums every now and again on the radio, or maybe a friend plays me something.

It's not my ambition to be a big star.

My life and my work are very interlocked. That's partly why I like to keep my private life private.

My friends sometimes used to ignore me completely, and that would really upset me badly.

I have a little boy, and I wanted to spend a lot of time with him.

Obviously I try to make the best music that I can, but after about two years of making an album, you start to worry: 'Is it going to come out all right? Is it all going to sound churned out?'

It's so important to me to do the washing, do the Hoovering. I don't ever want to lose contact with that.

I don't know about hiding away, but I really only like to present myself when I'm working on something - it's more my work I like to present to the world rather than myself.

I definitely don't think of myself as being an influence.

When I started music, I think it was responsible for keeping me sane, because training as a dancer really kept me in good spirits amid all the crazy stuff that happened when I first became popular.

My first Top of the Pops I didn't want to do. I was terrified. I'd never done television before. Seeing the video afterwards was like watching myself die.

I am just trying to be a good, protective mother. I want to give Bertie as normal a childhood as possible while preserving his privacy.

I don't listen to my old stuff very often at all.

People said I couldn't gig, and I proved them wrong.

The great thing about vinyl is that if you wanted to get a decent-sounding cut, you could really only have 20 minutes max on each side.

People ask what I really did in the three years between 'The Dreaming' and 'Hounds of Love.' I spent it with my family, living a normal home life.

Gene Wilder is so funny.