“I think that after a year of Portishead I’ve become a little more sober.”

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn’t feel like it’s about me. Time created a distance.

I am a very sensitive person, very impulsive and emotional.

I try to imagine how we would live if we didn’t know we were going to die. Would we live our lives differently? Less careful, maybe? Less scared? These are beautiful things to think about and build a song around.

There’s not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

The music comes first. When Geoff has made something the inspiration comes automatically. His music is very expressive. But still is is a very difficult process: I have to add something to his music, not push it away. It has to be equal, and I find that very difficult.

The blackness of darkness, forever.

I’ve had a wordless phase, and that’s still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.

A lot of people question my image and why I do what I do, and the answer is because this is how I want to present myself.

I’ve just put my heart and soul in a song and need at least a week to recover.

My voice adapts itself to the music. I can do a lot more than you hear in Portishead.

Suffering for your art is most definitely overrated but I do get a certain, I don’t know, satisfaction from being able to deal with my paranoia and insecurity.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it’s a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

My poor little New Zealand: exporting frozen meat in peace, live meat in war.

You’ll see, you’ll come to understand. These big things, these terrible things, are not the important ones. If they were, how could one go on living? No, it is the small, little things that make up a day, that bring fullness and happiness to a life.

There is little anyone can do with fanatics. Reasoning with them is a fool’s errand. Avoiding them is mandatory.

Hear much; speak little.

I didn’t feel comfortable at first with pure mathematics, or as a professor of pure mathematics. I wanted to do a little bit of everything and explore the world.

After me there are no more jazz singers . . . It’s a crime that no little singer is back there sockin’ it to me in my field. To keep it going, to keep it alive, because I’m not going to live forever.

At any appearance, I make sure that before the person takes a pic and runs away, that I make contact. All I can do is give that little bit of me, the kickback is miraculous.

There is always room in our budget for a little experimentation.