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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I think it's important that things are flawed.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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 love being with my friends, relaxing and talking.

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 do have the odd dream where I'm on stage and I've completely forgotten what I'm meant to be performing - so they are more nightmares than dreams.

I'm the shyest megalomaniac you're ever likely to meet.

I have to say I find it totally astounding that my albums do as well as they do. It's quite extraordinary, and it's actually very touching for me for the albums to be received with such warmth.

I think we all feel geeky at times, don't we? Isn't that all a part of the wonderful tapestry of life?