My mum was only 17 when she had my brother, and 19 when she had me. She was learning the ropes as she went along, and had a heroin addict boyfriend, which wasn’t easy.

Cathy Rigby. She was really good in that stage version of Peter Pan. No joke.

My mother, because now I have two sons and I have help around me – including my family – I can't imagine having four little ones under the age of nine, as she did.

Jimmy Carter, for his wisdom and courage in going to meet Hamas.

I think now, especially with Love & Hyperbole, I was like, let me just write the best thing that I can make for myself. Totally intuitively.

I had a bunch. When I was young, I really loved the Black-Eyed Peas and The Gorillas and bands like that. And then as I got older, I discovered Amy Winehouse and Lauryn Hill and older singers like Etta James. I gravitated towards a lot of young women who just played guitar and had great voices and wanted to emulate them in whatever I did, so they really inspired me.

If you're not taking care of yourself, it's almost impossible to try to help others take care of themselves.

People think that to be a pop star you have to look a certain way. I want to show people that there’s an alternative.

I don't write as often as a lot of artists I know. I save [my songwriting] for a period of time, so I bank up a lot of ideas and a lot of feelings, and then, not even necessarily on purpose, it becomes an album.

That's always been a tough thing. I've always struggled with staying present and not worrying too much about the future or the past. I'm always either dwelling on the past, or missing the past, or worrying about the future. So that's been a big challenge, because this type of lifestyle goes extremely fast.