Mika

“Melody is disarming. It's anarchic!”

“My relationship with my mother is not cute.”

“We all have to be dishes on a plate eventually, with the way we are marketed, but I have no intention of being a cheap Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“You can't believe the amount of speculation you get over your private life.”

“I have opinions on everything. I'm a stubborn old mule. The biggest problem is keeping my mouth shut.”

“The stage is my territory, my boxing ring. That's where I'm free.”

“I don't know where my father is from. I just don't. He's lived in so many countries.”

“Oh, I'm quite harmless in real life.”

“There's always apprehension whenever I launch anything, it seems. When I launch a tour, people are always, 'Oooh, is this gonna work?' And when I launch an album: 'Ooh, is this gonna work?' Or a new video. 'Really?' It's always like that - but I've always acted on the impulse that I have nothing to lose.”

“You never know which gig is going to be your last.”

“The music industry doesn't exist the way it used to. You'll never have another star like the stars of the '90s.”

“I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.”

“The best way to make the most serious point in the world is to be as unserious as possible.”

“I've always said in the press, I can fall in love with a man. I can fall in love with a woman. And I've always said that I have no shame in that.”

“New York is a bit of a dangerous place to me because you often leave in a blur.”

“My first record was about childhood. There were a lot of nursery rhyme and fairytale references; it was all about being naive.”

“I found school pretty tough. I got the mickey taken out of me at school.”

“Everything I do is very visual and very aural, so I don't read music, and I draw as much as I write out lyrics.”

“Identity for me is something that has to be played with and explored, and not become complacent about or uninterested in.”

“I was always told that I was too strange or that I was too cheesy by different groups of people, like the record companies said I was way too weird and the indie people wouldn't even let me in their band.”