“At about the age of ten, my friends and I discovered the joys of sitting in graveyards drinking merrydown cider and kissing and stealing our elder siblings’ records.”

The way I write, words can means lots of different things.

I love the water more than anything. I’m not very good at sunbathing – I get really bored. I love swimming and I love being like a fish and getting in the sea and just – I don’t know, it feels right.

I’m not comfortable holidaying in other people’s poverty.

My dad got me a chemistry book one Christmas and I burnt the garden shed down. I remember there was the most beautiful smell forever after in the remains.

When I’m on a roll nothing makes me happier or feel more satisfied, like plugging in, life makes sense.

Norfolk is not on the way to anywhere, you don’t stop off on the way somewhere else – it’s an end in itself. You have to want to go there; it’s an effort.

I don’t read music; I taught myself guitar.

One time I completely thought I’d turned into a werewolf and was sure I could see hairs sprouting from my face. At those times I’d suddenly go very quiet and not talk to anyone, stunned from the developments, being a werewolf and all.

I get a feeling, on a guitar, and I sort of mess around until something resonates with me, and then I just find that what happens is that a melody comes, and with that, words.

We’re all like little ants who scurry around with the materials that are at hand right now. Each generation finds new materials. Its just evolution, isn’t it?

I was scared of the Bible – it seemed whenever I read it I got bad luck. Then I befriended a couple of Jesus’s disciples and I used to show them modern life – how to run the hot and cold taps and things like that. They seemed alright but it didn’t change my feelings about the Bible jinx.

To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

Kissing was something I did a lot of. Kissing in a wheat field as the sun begins to set on a summer’s evening, with the haze of that light.

I have a friend who says the best boyfriends are ones with intimidating, good-looking older brothers. The boyfriends try harder because they’re so insecure. Maybe I’m the female equivalent.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there’s something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

I just like the child’s nightmares and therapy, once an experience has found the light of day I’m no longer under its spell, I’m free to tell it. I hope in telling honestly I can in some way help other people to do so also.

I try not to drink too much because when I’m drunk, I bite.

I decided to stop drinking while it was still my idea.

I keep telling people: Don’t make me the poster boy for AA because I don’t know a lot about sobriety, but I do know a lot about drinking.

My biggest weakness as a endurance athlete has been in not drinking enough water after training, thereby racing sometimes while dehydrated.

I’m calling for all responsible Americans to fight back and punish Pepsi for using a man who degrades women, who encourages substance abuse, and does all the things that hurt particularly the poor in our society.

When the movies first started, audiences were dumbstruck to see actresses walking around in evening gowns. They’d never seen anything like that. They wanted to be like those actors and actresses, so the movies informed their behavior.

Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.

My secret is one the world needs to know – nearly a billion people a year die from unsafe drinking water.