Quotes from Alison Moyet

I just find P.J. Harvey so mesmerising to watch because she remains unfathomable. She is the kind of woman who makes you rue the day you weren't born her. She always seems to be the cat that walks alone, and you don't feel you are supposed to know her.

If you think about it, I was at college, and then three months later, I was a massive pop star. It's stress-making, especially when you're a bit of an oddball as I was, the black sheep left to your own devices, and then suddenly everyone's interested in you.

I threw away the whole of my working history, my photograph albums, diaries and stage clothes. Shoving big, ugly discs on walls is a bit like rubbing people's faces in it, saying 'I am considerably richer than you.' It is completely unnecessary.

The press gave me a voice too quickly, and that could have unsettled a man who had every right to feel he should be in control of the thing he had created.

It is interesting seeing young people these days and watching how unimportant music is in their lives compared with our generation.

It wasn't like I felt I was on a wave. It was just so easy. It is only afterwards that I thought I really had a bit of good luck going on there with Yazoo.

The money has always been wasted on me. I don't care for beautiful things, funnily enough. I am my father's daughter. The things that excite me are the smell of a wood-burning stove, uncultivated fields. My house is decaying and falling to pieces. It's not had the love it deserves over twenty years.

When I saw Adele, I thought: 'I'll give it an hour before people say I was her,' just because I was fat. When you watch 'X Factor,' you can bet your bottom dollar, every single fat singer sounds like me as far as the judges are concerned. Can you imagine if they did that with every black artist?

My weight can swing by four stone.

When you have a creative mind it doesn't stop going.

I was socially awkward for many years. I stuttered, stammered, talked rubbish. I never take up invites to parties, and I've been invited to very glamorous things, but I never go.

I have lost and put on big batches of weight in my life many, many times. But what concerns me is the idea of being an obese old woman, because I don't like the idea of being physically incapable in someone else's hands.

I'm a bit multifaceted in the sense that I've got many more than one musical taste. If you think about it, I started out playing in a punk band and ended up doing electro-pop. That was more an accident than a plan.

It was always important to me that I made a record where I really sang well, and I don't think it's happened yet. There's always a possibility with each album that I might not record again, and I wanted to produce one that I could feel was mine.

There are a lot of people who can now see me as an artist for the first time.

I have always loved a hard-faced girl. I get that Alison Goldfrapp isn't easy, and I like her belligerence. She's deeply sexy and controlled, like a Strict Machine, and it seems to wind the b'jesus out of the women I know. On the outside, I watch and smile and will her on like a twisted silent maiden aunt in the dark corner.

It's really irrelevant, but I wouldn't want to be stick thin. It's better to have bit of fat on your face when you get older.

I wasn't good at being affable. You get beyond that and realise the attraction in any human being has more to do with what they give to someone rather than just being face candy.

There are very few record companies who will entertain a middle-aged woman coming to them with original material.

My idea of hell is a girlfriend ringing up and saying, 'Let's go shopping and have cocktails.' I'd rather play cards.

I just think that when you've been singing for 30 years, which I have been, you just want to find different things you can do with your voice. It's a constant journey. It's not like any one album that you make is who you are. It just reflects that particular day.

It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.

Of all the soul divas, Gladys Knight was the one for me. Knight's always been about tone and heart, none of the big showboating or extraneous doodling. She nailed a melody and only played a little around the edges like Ma Staple.

I came from a small town and at school in one class there was me, a member from Depeche Mode and someone who went on to join The Cure. That was all in one class of 30 kids.