It's tragic that you can define a whole movement in music by gender alone. People are like, 'Oh, look, another quirky girl.'

I get to know my regular fans, and they inspire me.

Mum doesn't like it when I mention that Dad's a better cook than her. He was born in Spain and spent eight years in Portugal and is exceptional at lots of cuisines.

Dressing up is like therapy; I feel better in myself when I've made an effort.

I'd rather die than let somebody get the better of me.

There's nothing wrong with a thick eyebrow; Frida Kahlo had them.

I get plenty of, 'Is that song about me?' from men but I just tell them to get over themselves.

I don't feel I fit in with morning television because I'm like a vampire and I like to stay up late.

I don't connect much with the present. I have more of an affinity for what came in the past.

I feel quite excited about the possibility of working on multiple albums. There's something really iconic about having a catalog featuring a lot of albums, and I'd love to have that legacy.

I think what makes me different from the average Joe is that I feel free to be myself and express myself in the way that I want. If that makes you mad, we're living in a world of dire straits. If anything, it makes you more sane.

Ever since I was little, my mum used to choose an outfit for me and lay it on the bed so I'd know what I was wearing the next day. I never went to a uniformed school, so I always had an outfit - and I never really grew out of that, I don't think.

It's amazing living alone. I'm very lucky. It's like a refuge.

I love Andre 3000 from OutKast. I think we'd complement each other, but I'm hoping he's got a good sense of humour.

I go running three times a week - outside in the park, come rain or shine, and I hate every moment of it. I hate everything about it. But I know it's important for health reasons and the reason why I run, in particular, is because my stage work is like cardiovascular work so I don't want to lose my breath on stage.

I really hate bureaucracy and the idea that I'm not a free person.

I feel quite fearless protecting the people I love.

If I get in a relationship, it's always for the long-term; if not, I don't see the point.

It's refreshing to have some time off from wondering whether I look fat.

Just as dressing well in your forties entails making choices that reflect who you are and not just wearing generic basics, looking good as you get older requires accentuating and enjoying what's specific to you rather than striving for cookie-cutter perfection.

Being an immigrant mother can be hard, but being a poor immigrant mother is much harder. You don't generally get to sit in cafes polishing your French by reading 'Le Monde.'

One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you're used to one stage, they zoom into another.

When I was 41, I had a very bad back pain, and it turned out to be Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

When I tell French parents that I know lots of American kids who will eat only pasta or only white rice, they can't believe it. I mean, they can understand how the kid left to his own devices might do that, but they can't imagine that parents would allow that to happen.

Where Americans might coo over a child's most inane remark to boost his confidence, middle-class French parents teach their kids to be concise and amusing, to keep everyone listening.

My family was once invited to lunch at a chateau owned by a friend of a friend. As we drove our rental car up to the giant castle, my kids gasped and said, 'They must be rich!'

Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them.

Podcasts immersed me in colloquial English and put me back in the American zeitgeist.

Soon after Donald Trump was inaugurated, I got a letter from France's interior ministry informing me that I was now French. By the time it arrived, I'd been French for nearly two weeks without even knowing it.

I've got letters from all over the world saying what you're describing as American parenting is Chilean middle-class parenting, or it is Finnish middle-class parenting, or it is Slovak middle-class parenting.

Optimism - even, and perhaps especially in the face of difficulty - has long been an American hallmark.

Sometimes I just tell my kids, 'Outside of France, I'm considered completely normal.' This worked until we traveled to London.

Every time I pass a cafe, I imagine it being stormed by men with Kalashnikovs.

A large part of the creative process is tolerating the gap between the glorious image you had in your mind and the sad thing you've just made.

I'm not an early adopter. I'll only start wearing new styles of clothing once they're practically out of date, and I won't move into a neighborhood until it's fully saturated with upscale coffee shops.

Remember that the problem with hyper-parenting isn't that it's bad for children; it's that it's bad for parents.

I've been vacationing in western North Carolina and northern Georgia since I was a kid. I arrive, marvel at the mountains, and put on an unconvincing Southern drawl.

It's fine to discuss money in France, as long as you're complaining that you don't have enough, or boasting about getting a bargain.

Parisiennes rarely walk around wearing the giant diamonds that are de rigueur in certain New York neighborhoods.

The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part.

In the English books, the American kids' books, typically, there is a problem, the characters grapple with that problem, and the problem is resolved.

As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken.

The main thing my bookcase says about me is that I'm not French.

Parisians won't admit that they go to the gym, let alone that they're scared of terrorists.

I hear people in their 20s describe the 40s as a far-off decade of too-late, when they'll regret things that they haven't done. But for older people I meet, the 40s are the decade that they would most like to travel back to.

When you're the foreigner and your kids are the natives, they realize you're clueless much sooner than they ordinarily would. I'm pretty sure mine skipped the Mommy-is-infallible stage entirely.

Discrimination was a problem before terrorism. Now, the bad deeds of a few people have made life worse for millions.

Babies aren't savages. Toddlers understand language long before they can talk.

I was scared to say I was in my 40s because at that point, it sounded really old, and to out myself as a middle-aged human - I felt very awkward about it.

There's this idea in America that you can be whatever you want. That remains an ideal in terms of how you dress too - when you go shopping, you try on all possible selves and then decide.