My style of playing is more enthusiasm and instinct than skill.

I always seem to feel that everything is about to cave in on me. I think that maybe music is my protection from that and in some senses it's an outlet to turn it into something euphoric: embracing the eventual decline.

Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.

I've always been a bit of a decorator. I think if I wasn't a singer I'd probably be in stage setting or interior design or something. I like clutter and I'm quite visually greedy. I can't have things to be plain; I have to have things looking interesting... maybe I'm just a frustrated interior designer stuck in a singing career.

I've been having this really weird anxiety dream about arriving too late or too early, and the people in charge are like, 'You have to leave! You have to go back to the hotel and get ready!' And I use the wrong exit, and I'm running down the red carpet in pyjamas, like, 'No! Don't look at me!'

I'm a light sleeper. I've never been one of those people who can put their head down and suddenly everything disappears. Nighttime is the time I get most scared, anxious or worried. In those darker moments before waking or sleeping is when I feel most, I don't know, I can turn on myself, and my imagination can take me dark places.

I'm completely in love with the world but also terrified of it. It creates some overwhelming feelings. Wanting to battle out that joy and fear is part of my music.

I've learned not to hide behind a veil of irony - to talk about my work in a more honest way.

I'd gone from being this art student messing about with music to this girl with a record deal, magazine front covers and all this hype. In many ways, it was everything I ever wanted, but when it happened all I felt was total, paralysing fear.

During the songs, you transcend yourself. The best way to be in the performance is to be without pause and be essentially in the moment, in that moment of expression.

I think I should get a bigger between-the-song persona, so then I'm not wandering around the stage like some mad old auntie that's saying hello to people and falling over.

You should have high expectations for yourself and others should come second.

I'm one of those people that is up for most things. When I was offered to sing at the Oscars I was like, 'Yeah, I want to know what that's like!' I'm always curious to know what things are like - as long as you're not compromising who you are.

My mum wanted me to go to university.

I love that sense of release as you throw yourself into the crowd as hundreds of arms are carrying you.

I've built my wardrobe color palette around red, so I'm happy with it, but I do get pangs when I see beautiful brunettes. I've already been blue, green, black, and blonde.

I used to dress like an eight-year-old boy. Traveling has inspired me to be more experimental.

I like to wear clothes that I will wear when I am an old lady.

Look, if Givenchy is going to lend you a dress, I'm not going to turn it down. I would wear that dress to just go out and buy a pint of milk if they would lend it to me.

I'm really careful with what the music gets put with, and we say no to so much stuff, loads of it, for things that might quadruple the sales of my album. But if it doesn't fit then it doesn't fit, you know?

I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn't have a name, so I thought 'Okay, I'll be Florence Robot/Isa Machine', before realising that name was so long it'd drive me mad.

I'm pretty obsessed with Stevie Nicks from her style to her voice. I like watching her on YouTube and her old performances, the way she moves and everything.

The first album, for better or for worse, was done over from the ages of 17-22, with a couple of different producers. Some of it was recorded in an old swimming pool, some of it was recorded in a synagogue - it kind of was all over the place.

If you asked me to go back to being 14 or 15, I couldn't - it was a terrifying time. I was so awkward in my own skin. I used to hide behind my hair because I was so ridiculously self-conscious.

My siblings and I were friends with the boys who would become our stepbrothers - we grew up on the same street. I feel very special to have these amazing people in my life and if we hadn't all moved into this big house together I think I would have missed out on that, because we would have drifted apart.

I got to live out my 11-year-old fantasies - I got to go on stage with Green Day. Billie Joe called my name from the stage. 'Dookie' was the first album I ever bought. I covered the whole of 'Nimrod' and he'd heard it. That was like the 11-year-old girl dreamed.

I didn't want to become a personality, I wanted to be a musician, but because I didn't have an album to stand by yet it was hard for people to see that. But now, two albums in, I'm happy with things.

I have this sensation of being in flight all the time, but being on stage is like creating a sanctuary in which you can completely lose yourself. The bits of your personality that you keep under wraps in ordinary life, you can let them run free.

Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving.

I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing - strangeness and charm. It's actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit the word 'hydrogen' in there. Isn't that a nice thing for scientists to call them though?

When making the first album, I think I wrote a song about every six months. The first album was so much about the vocals carrying it.

I definitely have a real self-destructive streak.

The release of 'Lungs' was so hard. It was terrifying, because it was the first time doing everything. The first experiences of media exposure were almost paralysing. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of the studio - it sent me a bit mad.

At the beginning of my career I was going through a really weird phase of dressing in boys clothes. I would only wear one American Apparel T-shirt and shorts and brogues the whole year round. Not the same T-shirt, obviously, but one style of American Apparel T-shirt. I think I was going through a tomboy stage.

But I was always much more interested in reading fashion magazines than I was music magazines when I was a teenager. Just that sense of romanticism and escapism and the dream of it has always been quite alluring to me, as well as that sense of becoming a character through clothes.

Music can tear me up inside.

When I am with my family, then I can just sort of switch off. It's kind of weird, because I go back and I go into this bedroom that I have had since I was a teenager. It is like this parallel universe, because one minute I am on the red carpet and then the next I am hiding out in this room I have had since I was 15.

I feel a responsibility to the fans who have paid to see me and I want to give as good a show as I possibly can.

It's very flattering when you look into the crowd and people have made an effort and dressed in your style.

I look really odd in jeans and a hoodie - it doesn't feel or seem right.