It's so important to me to do the washing, do the Hoovering. I don't ever want to lose contact with that.

I don't know about hiding away, but I really only like to present myself when I'm working on something - it's more my work I like to present to the world rather than myself.

I definitely don't think of myself as being an influence.

When I started music, I think it was responsible for keeping me sane, because training as a dancer really kept me in good spirits amid all the crazy stuff that happened when I first became popular.

My first Top of the Pops I didn't want to do. I was terrified. I'd never done television before. Seeing the video afterwards was like watching myself die.

I am just trying to be a good, protective mother. I want to give Bertie as normal a childhood as possible while preserving his privacy.

I don't listen to my old stuff very often at all.

People said I couldn't gig, and I proved them wrong.

The great thing about vinyl is that if you wanted to get a decent-sounding cut, you could really only have 20 minutes max on each side.

People ask what I really did in the three years between 'The Dreaming' and 'Hounds of Love.' I spent it with my family, living a normal home life.

Gene Wilder is so funny.

As we become this one global culture, in some ways it's things like the weather and nature that still hold our culture as unique to where we are.

I was aware of a lot of my friends being into things I wasn't into. Like sarcasm. It had never been a part of my family - they still don't use sarcasm.

What I've tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else's mind, like in Wuthering Heights.

I think it's almost a law of nature that there are only certain things that hit an emotive space, and that's what was always special for me about music: it made me feel something.

In a popular medium, you're going to get loads of stuff that is trite, but there'll also be some really special moments.

I love being a mother. I think it's the best thing I've ever done, and I personally feel that it's had a very positive effect on my work. I think it's an encouraging force for creativity, it feeds creativity - it did for me, certainly.

I suppose I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person, and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world.

I had an incredibly full life with my imagination: I used to have all sorts of trolls and things; I had a wonderful world around my toys and invented people. I don't mean I had imaginary friends; I just had this big imagination thing going on. I didn't need any imaginary friends, because I had so much other stuff going on.

I guess what all artists want is for their work to touch someone or for it to be thought provoking.

I am just a quiet reclusive person who has managed to hang around for a while.

One of the main reasons for wanting to perform live again was to have contact with that audience.

For the last 12 years, I've felt really privileged to be living such a normal life. It's so a part of who I am.

If you believe in what you do and you really want to be in music, just stick at it. It's always a learning process. Enjoy it because I think making music is a privilege, really. In an ideal world, it should also always be fun. As much as possible, make it fun.

There's always ideas buzzing around, but it's whether they actually end up materialising into a song.

If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time... evaporates.

I don't get out to parties often.

Thanks to everyone who's encouraged and supported my work over the years.

I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.

For me, having a child is a really great responsibility because you've got something there that is depending on you for information and love until a certain age when it goes to school.

I could find faults with all my albums because that's just a part of being an artist - it's hard being a human being, isn't it?

Originally, when I wrote the song 'The Sensual World' I had used text from the end of 'Ulysses.' When I asked for permission to use the text, I was refused, which was disappointing.

I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.

I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being.

When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.

I really love Hitchcock; I think he was a complete genius, to me one of the best directors. Such a sense of how to put things together.

I listen to very little music, particularly contemporary. If I listen to it, it's going to be my own music, some arrangement or something. I spend so much time listening that the way I relax is by watching things, a comedy; that's my way to wind down.

We have such little mystery in our lives generally because of how we live now. I mean, of course, mystery is all around us, but the way we live our lives now, we're too busy to be bothered with it.

When your mother dies, you're not a little girl any more.

I'm not sure there are a lot of things I'd want a manager for. I suppose I feel that at least the decisions I make are coming from me, and I'm not put into a situation that I wouldn't want to be in.

I don't read newspapers, and I've said I don't watch the news. I love books, but I don't read much. What I do is I get people to read to me, and I put the stories in my head.

I wasn't an easy, happy-go-lucky girl because I used to think about everything so much, and I think I probably still do.

I understand that people want to just listen to a track and put it on their iPod, and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but why can't that exist hand in hand with an album? They're such different experiences.

I suppose the worst case scenario is that people will get to the point where they can't actually afford to make what they want to make creatively. The industry is collapsing.