“And in a repressed society, artists fulfil a sense of harking back to instant gratification, or immediate expression, by doing things that function on the edge of society, or outside of what is conventionally accepted.”

I wrote about Freud and the process of sublimation, which is when you learn to stop breast-feeding, or stop going to the toilet whenever you want to. It’s about learning to repress a desire for instant gratification.

I guess it’s subverting our expectations in terms of how we’ve come to expect women to present themselves when they’re being naked. Also the woman’s and the man’s role is subverted in that image. You’d expect the man to be carrying the woman.

I’m not really frightened by experimenting – that’s the main thing. I really like mixing very old beautiful pieces that are from thrift shops or that have some historical value with quite new futuristic things.

It’s very much to do with how I’m feeling … I love to be experimental and use eclectic mismatched things and put them together to see what third entity is created!

I did gardening and cooking and drawing and reading to try take the pressure off the music – just being eclectic and putting the fun back in and bringing more innocence in again is really important.

I’ve hidden behind my hair more than clothes. Sometimes having long hair with a fringe is very useful when you don’t want to look at people. I used to have very short hair, but long hair is my thing – a black nocturnal shield.

I think the best cure is to stop doing the thing that you think you should be doing and go and have a bit of fun in another medium, maybe other crazy things.

I like to get dark sometimes and then come back out into the light.

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don’t usually employ.

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time – very inspiring and dramatic.

I’d love to win a Grammy! Not ambitious or anything. And just having a really lovely bunch of kids and a happy family life, would be good for me.

They say for every high high there must be a low low low low low

I always think that the exceptional people are those who remain outsiders but still communicate on a grand scale. I think I want everyone to feel more free, and so I feel really claustrophobic on behalf of lots of people.

I find it really interesting that people are shocked by the raw, natural representation of a woman and a man’s body.

We are bits of energy floating about in various guises, and when we die we rejoin the big cosmic soup of the universe.

Music’s free and music’s for everyone to enjoy and express and interpret. It transcends countries and times and decades.

The self forms at the edge of desire, and a science of self arises in the effort to leave that self behind.

We can observe gravity in daily life. If we could throw an apple to the edge of the universe, we would observe it accelerating.

They’re all a huge influence on me. For me, just following rock history and watching Darkness On the Edge of Town and realizing that’s it’s okay to be obsessed with a snare sound because Bruce Springsteen was obsessed with a snare sound.

Humourists lead… an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.

Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.

For secrets are edged tools, And must be kept from children and from fools.

And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know that I can do it.

At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.