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.

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.

Be proud of your struggles. Adversity brings out the best in us.

The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

The covetous man is ever in want.

...God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness

It's always awkward when someone doesn't realize you're joking and devotes thought time to what you've said. Double that when the person is wearing tinfoil.

I was lucky enough to marry a wonderful chef.

Now get that Rose, get that get that Rose A little Hennessy & Louis the Thirteenth

Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders, so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

I played team sports, but I never felt like I fitted in that well, so this allowed me to be part of a community but to do it in my own way.