“I’m not a pop act, churning stuff out really quickly. I find the music that arises from that style of working is distracted, not particularly profound.”

I like not to feel that all my eggs are in one basket, or I get nervous.

Celebrity culture is an aspirational culture regardless of how much you don’t want it to be.

I don’t normally have time to read, so when I go away I like to take a few books.

I’m not one for sightseeing or going around the shops when I’m on holiday. I do enough shopping when I’m at home, and like to have a complete break when I’m away.

I believe in life you need to always ask for everything politely and nicely, and then if they say no you do what you wanted to do anyway

I’m really into food; it’s one of my favourite things – everything from potato waffles to lobster.

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

You cannot schedule death.

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

I’m the type of person who, if somebody offers me a free meal, I get excited because you never know where your next free meal is going to come from.

If I go out with no make-up and a tracksuit on, nobody comes up to me. And if they do, I won’t do a photo because I wouldn’t want any photographic evidence.

I love interesting people with eccentric stories and outsiders of the world.

If I see something that inspires me, I’ll dress like it.

Anybody who says they don’t want to be seen on a show which has millions of people watching it at one time when they’re in the business of selling records is a bit silly.

There’s nothing better than achieving your goals, whatever they might be.

I think I’d be a million times more successful and more iconic if I was a singer in the 40s. I’d be allowed a level of mystery and I think I’d suit that decade.

Faith is a withholding of conclusion so that you allow what is to arise.

Freedom and Love arise when you die into the unknown mystery of being.

Have you noticed, with whatever quality of love you have experienced, that when true love arises, it opens up both your mind and emotions? It’s an openness to whatever is happening.

Silence is itself the eternal witness without form or attributes. As you rest more profoundly as the witness, all objects take on their natural functionality, and awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive contractions and identifications. It returns to its natural non-state of Presence.

As a result of a kiss, there arises in the mind a wonderful feeling of delight that awakens and binds together the love of them that kiss.

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.

Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.

It is not lust alone that one should be afraid of in the life of the world. There is also anger. Anger arises when obstacles are placed in the way of desire.