Quotes from Lisa Stansfield

I used to hate touring, I used to absolutely hate it! I think one of the reasons why was because in between songs I found it difficult to talk to the audience, and now I don't care, I say what I want!

I think that if you hear music young, whatever music you hear influences you. I'm white, but I've been influenced by black music.

Manchester has always been a massively innovative city, loads of great scientific findings have come from Manchester. The first computer in the world was there and took up a whole building. So Manchester has always been very innovative.

Fame made me insecure and insular. I wanted to run away from being me.

I'm like two different people. The way I sing comes from the music I listened to when I was younger, from black American R&B singers. My speaking voice is something else. It's what my mum and dad taught me.

Singers like Gladys Knight are mostly responsible for how I learned to sing.

I was really skinny and I had greasy hair and I was knock-kneed. There's something still in me that's like that, and I catch myself, you know when you're walking or something, and you think, 'Oh no, you're still that drippy person.'

I absolutely loved it in Ireland.

I work out with weights, do yoga and run on the treadmill at the gym.

People get trapped sometimes and they don't feel they have a voice. And if you can in some way help someone by writing a song, it's really lovely.

Probably because the first two albums were so successful, we got a little bit smug.

As a rule I start the day with a delicious health cocktail which includes soya protein powder, porridge oats, water, vitamin C, sunflower seeds and honey, plus Dr Udo's Ultimate Oil Blend for all the essential fatty acids your body needs.

That's a part of human nature that men and women, women and women, whatever your sexuality, you flirt with each other and it's completely harmless and it doesn't really mean it crosses a line... You can tell where it is.

She used to drive me to clubs for engagements and when I was 16 I got a job presenting a TV show in Newcastle. My mum didn't really like driving, but she carried on. Once I remember we got stuck in a snow storm, but she carried on to get me there in time. She was an amazing, incredible person.

Whenever I've collaborated with anyone in the past it's just happened really, I've never actively sought it out.

I always really loved soul music but all my friends were into the new romantic scene. I'd go to new romantic clubs and then go home and listen to soul music. I was sort of ashamed of listening to disco and soul music!

If you are a soul singer, you are a soul singer. If you are a heavy metal singer, then you are a heavy metal singer. What's color got to do with it? I don't go around thinking, 'I sing soul music and I'm white.' I just sing the way I feel.

The first writers I knew about were Motown's Holland-Dozier-Holland.

One of the only things I've regretted was saying yes to a TV special, 'Motown Mania,' and I said I'll sing you a Diana Ross song. It was just naff.

My mum used to listen to Motown. Diana Ross was my first singing teacher, really. I'd just sing along all the time.

You know that something is good but you never really know how good. You always underestimate how much of an impact something is going to have.

I was happy to carry on without children because I was completely immersed in my work and my career. I only heard the clock ticking in my late 30s, and when my mother Marion died the year I turned 40 it hit me with such a force that we ended up having IVF, which turned out to be unsuccessful.

I think women were just accepted more as songwriters when they sat on a stool with a guitar and had scruffy hair. It was quite insulting really, because it was like saying that if you're pretty and slim and glamorous there's no way anything could be going on between your ears, you just like doing your makeup.

We were working class, but my mother stopped working at the mill when she married my father and he went on to become an electrical engineer and later a draughtsman. So although we were never rich he was bringing in enough money to be able to splash out occasionally.