KT Tunstall

“I've always tried to avoid music being direct therapy, and I've always found there's a power when you write something that can have its own interpretation - although I'm not being intentionally evasive.”

“I've never been a confessional writer.”

“Venice Beach is incredibly quiet at night: no streetlights, no traffic, hummingbirds in the garden, palm trees everywhere.”

“I can play piano, classical flute, guitar, bass and I'm OK on drums.”

“When I went to university I survived on jacket potatoes and pasta for three years.”

“I'm shocked at how much I can talk about myself.”

“Sales have never been a source of joy for me in terms of my music. It's really about who's turning up at your shows, what people are saying about it.”

“The only thing I know about being Asian is that my hair is black and my eyelashes are straight and I have strange eyebrows.”

“I've always had a tendency to keep an emergency exit in a song. I can't remember ever writing a song that is completely and thoroughly depressing; there's always been a way out somehow. A sense of hope in song, regardless of the subject matter.”

“I was very into tribal techno and used to go and really lose myself in great dance music.”

“In Scotland, Dad grew courgettes which were the size of my leg. I'd step into the garden and it was like 'The Day of the Triffids.'”

“My maternal grandmother was Cantonese, so I'm a quarter Chinese and half Irish and a quarter Scottish and raised by English parents living in Scotland.”

“Skiing fast feels like complete freedom to me.”

“I work better under pressure. I was the local badminton champion when I was a kid, and there was another girl who used to thrash me for the five days leading up to the tournament and then I would just nail her to the floor in the competition.”

“I've never considered myself a locked-down straight person. I've had relationships with girls.”

“I think there is optimism to what I write.”

“I often talk too much and don't listen enough.”

“Politics for me is when I feel a personal engagement between people: I don't trust politicians.”

“If I can be somewhere with sunshine and have bare feet and a book, I'm happy.”