Quotes from FKA twigs

What makes me happy is having a really nice day out with my mum, or getting better at something I've been working hard at.

I was never the pretty girl at school. I'm tiny and mixed-race. I grew up in a white area. I was always the loner.

Fashion's important to me, but beauty fades. All that stuff is fun while it lasts, but anything can happen tomorrow. You've got to have so much more about you than the way you look or your clothes.

I don't know if I'm a tortured soul, but I was born heartbroken. I remember feeling it when I was so young. I was like, 'Mum, it hurts.'

When I first released music, and no one knew what I looked like, I would read comments like: 'I've never heard anything like this before; it's not in a genre.' And then my picture came out six months later: now she's an R&B singer.

It's really easy to project this whole ideology of what being an artiste is, and I'm just not down with intellectualizing it. I just think, if you feel like doing something, then do it.

In school, I had a tough time fitting in, and dancing was my way of being in my own element. As a teenager, I became a bit disillusioned with it. Even with competitions, I'd win, but still there would be tears.

I've soaked up so much through dancing, but I also have to be still. I want to be silent and read, to shut up and take time to respect the vision someone put into a book.

A few years ago, I found out that there's a lot of Gypsy blood on my mother's side. I'm wild in that way - I've been brought up to do my own thing.

I always felt like Tahliah's a very grown-up name to have. It's a pretty name when you're young, and then I think when I became a young lady, it felt kind of like a lot to grow into for some reason. I don't know. It sounds kind of regal. I never really liked it. I always felt like I couldn't live up to it.

I want people to see what's inside my head rather than just looking at me.

I once said to a boy, 'You're a really good kisser,' and he said, 'You're only as good as the person you're kissing.' I think it's the same with the music.

I'm a strange person - I don't really get rewards out of how many hits I have on YouTube. I love it, and I'm grateful, and it's important to me. But does it equal peace within me? No, it doesn't.

I was always the poor kid, even though I very much tried to pretend to be the other way. Always well presented. Always really active in the school, doing fashion shows, plays, involved in every single aspect of the school. Overcompensating, I think, for the fact that I knew I wouldn't be going on the ski trip every January.

I have amazing collaborators as well, but I want to learn more and be a self-contained unit.

Twigs has been my nickname for years, and I guess a lot of people close to me called me Twigs, like, as a nickname. Before I even did dancing properly or anything, like, substantially creative, I was still Twigs.

Being beautiful isn't everything... Sometimes it's interesting to show how you feel on the inside on the outside, just through expressing yourself.

I've never been into the typical R&B voice, with runs and bluesy sounding words. That doesn't suit me.

Racism is unacceptable in the real world, and it's unacceptable online.

When I first put out music, people didn't know what I looked like. They called it a new type of something; they couldn't put a genre on it - it was where indie and urban kind of meet in the middle. I thought that was quite exciting.

I've been inspired by people's work, but I never grew up with posters on my bedroom wall or obsessed with one person.

I don't know any Beatles songs. My dad never listened to Elvis or Sting or Bowie. Any band name that's on a t-shirt, I probably won't know their music, like AC/DC or whatever. I don't know what that is. As a kid, I would sing along to artists like Tania Maria.

I'm not going to become a costume version or caricature of myself; I like to morph.

Obviously I know if you're putting yourself out there, saying, 'Hey! Listen to my music!,' with pictures of yourself in the magazines, then people are going to judge you. 'I hate her music. I hate her hair. I hate her production. I hate her videos.' Fine: don't care. That's the great thing about art: it's not for everyone.