9/11 is probably the main reason I didn't release an album for five years.
Madonna working with Justin Timberlake is supposed be cool but I don't think there's anything cool about it.
I think Kylie's underrated... Cool is knowing yourself and I think Kylie Minogue really knows who she is and doesn't try to be anything else.
I grew up in a mixed-race family in Bristol. My cousin was this white guy who was interested in Parliament, Marc Bolan, Bowie. His friends were football thugs and while I was getting ready for bed, they'd be listening to all that music. When I was older, I'd go to a Jamaican sound system and there were no white people.
I had an uncle who adored Al Green. He was white, but he only listened to black music.
The music I should be doing is music that you haven't heard before - whether you like it or not. I don't want to just repeat.
I never like something too live or too electronic. I'll take a bit of both.
Someone at Hollywood Records said, 'Are you into Alanis Morissette?' I said 'Yeah, she sells 26 million albums, of course. It would be perverse if she works with me, but I don't think you can get her.' A week later they say she's coming down the studio.
I'm not very good with roughing it.
I never sold out. I never made an album to buy a house.
I never compromised myself musically.
I have loyal fans, really loyal fans.
Schizophrenia runs in the family.
I can't just be thinking about what people like.
People put you into a category and if you don't fight it you're stuck there for the rest of your life.
Trip-hop? That's never existed and they say I invented it. Trip-hop is just hip-hop with a girl singing on top.
There's a certain type of success you can have where it means nothing. You're just becoming someone in Hello! magazine and no one knows what you actually do any more... the only way to escape that is to go back underground.
There's bound to be turbulence in any situation if you're with someone for long enough. Especially if you're with someone like me.
I'm hard work to live with. Someone who wants to be my girlfriend has to be totally devoted because I don't give very much back.
My background was Rude Boys, Teddy Boys, rockabillys and skinheads. I was into reggae and Blondie and The Cure, and especially The Specials - these black and white guys getting it together. Extreme personalities. Extreme talent.
I would rather hang out with a cleaner than a celebrity.
I would work with someone humble like that guy Peter Andre than Madonna.
Oh, I still like dresses. I've still got plenty of them. It's just that I don't put them on specially for photo-shoots anymore. It's just part of my everyday life.
There are certain things you can talk to a partner about and it's someone to lean on. But I refuse to get into a relationship just for the sake of comfort.
I have my routine. In the evenings I watch 'Seinfeld' and 'Frasier.' That finishes about 11.30 and then I go to bed. I get up at eight o'clock every day, and I'm on the phone straight away, doing business.
I grew up around a lot of angry men.
People can't work out my music, but neither can I. I just put it together. I don't know how it happens.
A guy threw a stone at my head when I was eight. I told my nan, and she said, 'Get a bigger stone.' That's what I got programmed into me. And sometimes I find it a struggle to get it out of me.
I was quite... feminine. Not in my actions, in my ways. If one of my uncles had trouble at school, they'd go to that person and thump him. It's all a man thing. They got sent off to boxing when they were kids. You live in a tough area, you get off to boxing. My auntie tried to do that to me. I lasted six minutes in boxing.
I'm forced away from what I would call my music. I can't do another thing like 'Maxinquaye.' But if people didn't go out and copy it, I might have done another three or four 'Maxinquayes.' Which is terrible.
If I had made another 'Maxinquaye,' I'd have had ten times as much success. I ain't going down that path, because that way you're totally controlled by people around you. I don't want to be controlled.
I was never part of the Bristol scene. My sound was a Knowle West sound. Massive Attack wouldn't come to my area because they know they'd have got beaten up there.
I'm straight-up with people.
I'm not going to be pretentious and two-faced to get a good review. But that's the kind of thing which gets you a rep in this business.
If someone is cool to me, I'll be cool to them.
Unity makes you stronger - you need that in this business.
England is very regimented. Go to work, come home from work, go to the pub.
I've had my differences with Massive Attack, but you can't deny what they've done. They've changed the face of music. They should make up an award for them even if there ain't one.
My manager told me that a kid who was in a coma woke up after ten days when they played him one of my songs. That now means more to me than winning any award.
If I'd lived in Bristol, I'd probably be doing building site stuff, plastering. Probably not the plastering. It would have been mixing. I could always get work from friends who did construction. But I wasn't into getting up at seven in the morning.
I never considered myself a funny person.
School is about who you know, but I think it's a form of brainwashing. I learnt to read and write and that was enough.
Success has got nothing to do with being happy. I've been very rich, and been unhappy, and I've been very poor, and been happy.
To be honest with you, it was almost like I could do no wrong after 'Maxinquaye.' And when I was putting together 'Nearly God,' I was thinking, 'Will you stay with me if I put out something that radio cannot play?'
I didn't want to be just a Top 20 artist.
I've always loved rock music. I've always loved stuff like the Specials and the Breeders and things like that. But it was hip-hop that really got me into music.
People used to talk about my lyrical content and not about my music, and to be honest, I think I have got lazy with my lyrics over the years.
Well, the truth is that we are all mystical and that there is something going on that can't be explained. Outside of the day-to-day stuff like getting up going to work, we all have something going on within us, and we all know that there is something going on - we're spiritual creatures and we are very powerful.