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 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'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.

My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.

God emptied out that first tomb so that He could turn around and empty out me.

At times we must forgive others even when they don’t deserve it. We forgive them because we deserve it. Free yourself.

But words are more powerful than anything.

Didacticism is the death of art.

Part of the power of the Internet is that information flows out there and it's generally not censored and it's generally not controlled by any single authority.

Part of the success of the show is that the audience sees themselves in the characters, becomes the characters. The more they inhabit the characters, the more they see

Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.

My dream roles haven't been written yet. My favorite thing to do is to dive into the uncharted territories of a new script that's untainted by someone else's idea of the character.

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.