FKA twigs

“I write exactly what I think. If it's a raw subject, I write lots of things and then pull out all the fluff words.”

“When I first put out music, people didn't know what I looked like. They called it a new type of something; they couldn't put a genre on it - it was where indie and urban kind of meet in the middle. I thought that was quite exciting.”

“I think we live in a culture where it is really difficult to get privacy because everything is so accessible. It's very difficult to maintain your comfortable life with a sort of mystique.”

“I've never been into the typical R&B voice, with runs and bluesy sounding words. That doesn't suit me.”

“I've soaked up so much through dancing, but I also have to be still. I want to be silent and read, to shut up and take time to respect the vision someone put into a book.”

“A few years ago, I found out that there's a lot of Gypsy blood on my mother's side. I'm wild in that way - I've been brought up to do my own thing.”

“Racism is unacceptable in the real world, and it's unacceptable online.”

“I'm an artist, and I'm a bit weird, and I'm probably a bit eccentric.”

“I love things that are harsh and things that are too loud. And I love lulling people into a false sense of security. That's life.”

“In school, I had a tough time fitting in, and dancing was my way of being in my own element. As a teenager, I became a bit disillusioned with it. Even with competitions, I'd win, but still there would be tears.”

“Fashion's important to me, but beauty fades. All that stuff is fun while it lasts, but anything can happen tomorrow. You've got to have so much more about you than the way you look or your clothes.”

“I'm a strange person - I don't really get rewards out of how many hits I have on YouTube. I love it, and I'm grateful, and it's important to me. But does it equal peace within me? No, it doesn't.”

“I feel confident that the work I've put in will make people see me as a music artist before anything else.”

“When I first released music, and no one knew what I looked like, I would read comments like: 'I've never heard anything like this before; it's not in a genre.' And then my picture came out six months later: now she's an R&B singer.”

“I want people to see what's inside my head rather than just looking at me.”

“What makes me happy is having a really nice day out with my mum, or getting better at something I've been working hard at.”

“It's really easy to project this whole ideology of what being an artiste is, and I'm just not down with intellectualizing it. I just think, if you feel like doing something, then do it.”

“Obviously I know if you're putting yourself out there, saying, 'Hey! Listen to my music!,' with pictures of yourself in the magazines, then people are going to judge you. 'I hate her music. I hate her hair. I hate her production. I hate her videos.' Fine: don't care. That's the great thing about art: it's not for everyone.”

“I was always the poor kid, even though I very much tried to pretend to be the other way. Always well presented. Always really active in the school, doing fashion shows, plays, involved in every single aspect of the school. Overcompensating, I think, for the fact that I knew I wouldn't be going on the ski trip every January.”

“I'm not going to become a costume version or caricature of myself; I like to morph.”