I wasn't good at being affable. You get beyond that and realise the attraction in any human being has more to do with what they give to someone rather than just being face candy.
I have always loved a hard-faced girl. I get that Alison Goldfrapp isn't easy, and I like her belligerence. She's deeply sexy and controlled, like a Strict Machine, and it seems to wind the b'jesus out of the women I know. On the outside, I watch and smile and will her on like a twisted silent maiden aunt in the dark corner.
Within three months I had gone from being this black sheep of the town to suddenly becoming a pop star.
If you think about it, I was at college, and then three months later, I was a massive pop star. It's stress-making, especially when you're a bit of an oddball as I was, the black sheep left to your own devices, and then suddenly everyone's interested in you.
My idea of hell is a girlfriend ringing up and saying, 'Let's go shopping and have cocktails.' I'd rather play cards.
When you have a creative mind it doesn't stop going.
The money has always been wasted on me. I don't care for beautiful things, funnily enough. I am my father's daughter. The things that excite me are the smell of a wood-burning stove, uncultivated fields. My house is decaying and falling to pieces. It's not had the love it deserves over twenty years.
Yazoo was Vince's sound ultimately. At the time Vince and I got together he had only recorded one album with Depeche and Depeche were to go on to greater things.
I came from a small town and at school in one class there was me, a member from Depeche Mode and someone who went on to join The Cure. That was all in one class of 30 kids.
My style of singing has always been referred to 'soul' singing when it fact it's more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I'm closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.
Becoming famous is a really shocking thing, especially when you don't have aspirations to it. It got to the point where I would try and avoid making eye contact with anyone. It was freaky, and it just happened overnight. I couldn't handle it.
I'm a bit multifaceted in the sense that I've got many more than one musical taste. If you think about it, I started out playing in a punk band and ended up doing electro-pop. That was more an accident than a plan.
Of all the soul divas, Gladys Knight was the one for me. Knight's always been about tone and heart, none of the big showboating or extraneous doodling. She nailed a melody and only played a little around the edges like Ma Staple.
I was always an odd girl; I managed to alienate a lot of people. I felt like a square peg in a round hole in the music industry and created a lot of neurosis for myself.
I have lost and put on big batches of weight in my life many, many times. But what concerns me is the idea of being an obese old woman, because I don't like the idea of being physically incapable in someone else's hands.
I was writing and I have three kids. I was occupying my time with them but it was difficult.
I was a single parent, and I was prohibited from working.
I threw away the whole of my working history, my photograph albums, diaries and stage clothes. Shoving big, ugly discs on walls is a bit like rubbing people's faces in it, saying 'I am considerably richer than you.' It is completely unnecessary.
One of the reasons I got really fat when I left home was because I thought rich people ate white bread and Spam. I also thought they could get processed meals, because we never did, so that was exciting.
Instead of thinking that's a nice tune, you start thinking is it the right pace, is it the right tempo? That is the death nell for artists.
