“When I was 18, science, physics, and math were my favorite. I was a bit of a nerd – the only girl with a lot of boys at chess championships.”

In 2008, I was more just thinking about using the touchscreen for writing the songs. From there I started thinking about how I visualised music.

I miss you, but I haven’t met you yet!

I think every year brings unknowns that you have to deal with and handle, confront and embrace.

I have always had a certain song in my head, a certain chemistry of sounds.

Our times seem to be so much about redefining where we are physical and where we’re not.

You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.

i’m back at my cliff still throwing things off i listen to the sounds they make on their way down i follow him with my eyes ’till they crash imagine what my body would sound like slamming against those rocks.

If you can make nature and technology friends, then you can make everyone friends; you can make everyone intact. That’s what women do a lot – they’re the glue between a lot of things.

In school, I guess I was a difficult, know-it-all type of student… I was always complaining that music education was too academic.

I’d done three solo albums in a row, and that’s quite narcissistic.

I feel like the people from Iceland have a different relationship with their country than other places.

There is this stereotype of Icelanders all believing in spirits, and I’ve played up to that a bit in interviews.

I get highs, to be totally honest, in second-hand shops. My hunting instinct, I expect, really kicks in.

For a person as obsessed with music as I am, I always hear a song in the back of my head, all the time, and that usually is my own tune. I’ve done that all my life.

Everything is so designed and airbrushed and Botoxed, it makes us think, ‘Oh, everybody’s perfect except me. Everything’s smooth except me.’ But nothing is smooth.

When I was 20, political music was the uncoolest thing on earth. But when Bush got elected, that was the first time I started actually reading the news.

Achieving gender equality requires the engagement of women and men, girls and boys. It is everyones responsibility.

Every father expects his boy to do the things he wouldn’t do when he was young.

What is my task? To get the gospel around the world in the shortest possible time to every man and woman and boy and girl!

Dancing and music were my first love. I was happiest at being a chorus boy.

In addition to the social pressures from the scientific community there is also at work a very human trait of individual scientist.

Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren’t that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.

Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.

Onward, my brave boys – money or no money – men or no men! Have you love? Have you God? Onward and forward to the breach, you are irresistible.