I am a very sensitive person, very impulsive and emotional.

A lot of people question my image and why I do what I do, and the answer is because this is how I want to present myself.

Suffering for your art is most definitely overrated but I do get a certain, I don't know, satisfaction from being able to deal with my paranoia and insecurity.

Let's get one thing straight: there's no such thing as the Bristol sound.

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn't feel like it's about me. Time created a distance.

The blackness of darkness, forever.

There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

I've just put my heart and soul in a song and need at least a week to recover.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it's a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.

The ego is the ultimate conspirator.

Your hearing status does not make you a better person. Your humanity does.

Problems are chances for us to do our best.

I shall lie folded like a saint, Lapped in a scented linen sheet, On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint, Narrow and cold and neat.

When you say "Yes" to something, you include something you do want in your experience. When you say "No" to something, you include something you don't want in your experience.

There can always be new beginnings... even for people like us.

I try to have reasonably happy endings because I would hate any child to be cast down in gloom and despair; I want to show them you can find a way out of it.

My dear sister, I hope, when God Almighty in his righteous providence shall take me out of time into eternity, that it will be by a flash of lightning.

Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive.

The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.