I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike.

I've never experienced chronic poverty, but I know what it's like to live on £3 a week.

I think music is the most phenomenal platform for intellectual thought.

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

I think people in Great Britain are a bit jaded sometimes.

Women's issues have always been a part of my life.

Feminism is a word that I identify with. The term has become synonymous with vitriolic man-hating but it needs to come back to a place where both men and women can embrace it. It is particularly important for women in developing countries.

Money is a good thing and it's obviously useful, but to work only for money or fame would never interest me.

I only want to make music because I have a passion for it.

I have different hats; I'm a mother, I'm a woman, I'm a human being, I'm an artist and hopefully I'm an advocate. All of those plates are things I spin all the time.

I wouldn't say that I've mellowed. I'm less mellow, perhaps.

One wouldn't want to have the same dilemmas at 50 as one had at 15. And indeed I don't. I have a very different take on life.

I love to make music and stay grounded.

I'm not particularly attention-seeking.

I would love to meet a dodo.

Most women are dissatisfied with their appearance - it's the stuff that fuels the beauty and fashion industries.

I've had my share of dark days of the soul. I try not to focus on it too much so it doesn't get to me.

People ask me so many questions.

I want people to start thinking about what it means to be HIV-positive and to ask questions about that.

HIV/AIDS has no boundaries.

I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

I didn't want to be perceived as a girly girl on stage.

I don't have clear-cut positions. I get baffled by things. I have viewpoints. Sometimes they change.

I'm just an ordinary person.