When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.

For me, success is being happy. I used to think it was lots of houses, lots of record sales, lots of stories to tell. But some massive life changes, getting a divorce and my dad dying, led to a huge period of reflection.

Use Creme de la Mer balm when your skin gets dry on a plane. You can put it on your cheeks to give your face a bit of a glow after you land.

I'm not really that comfortable, to be honest, singing about my darkest moments.

Don't let your parents telling you that you shouldn't do something stop you from doing it.

Touring is such a major sacrifice, especially as you get older, to be away from friends and family and home and any sort of routine or home comforts.

I've always had a tendency to keep an emergency exit in a song. I can't remember ever writing a song that is completely and thoroughly depressing; there's always been a way out somehow. A sense of hope in song, regardless of the subject matter.

If your parents only listen to jazz or folk, you're like one of those trees you see in botanic gardens that have wire frames on them - you grow into that shape, you follow it or you have to break away from it. But I didn't have influences to embrace or kick against - I also had no idea what anything was.

The only thing I know about being Asian is that my hair is black and my eyelashes are straight and I have strange eyebrows.

I can do the vocal acrobatics but I really try not to. I've always been drawn to singers who sing it like it is, pure, straight down the line: Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Carole King. Simplicity is really important to me.

You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.

I really liked writing rhyming poems and plays.

British music lovers in general are dreadfully concerned about being cool, but I'm quite happy to grab uncool by the horns at any opportunity.

My dad's a physicist and had a key to the St Andrew's observatory, and we used to pop down to see Halley's Comet and Saturn and meteor showers.

KIN' is basically a kind of rite of passage, scars-and-all celebration of going through difficult things in your life and being better for it.

I grew up thinking, 'You go to university, you get your degree, you get a job, you get married and then you have a family.' But when I got to the point in my life where I had all those things, and was looking to start a family, I was miserable. I realised I didn't want kids.

I work better under pressure. I was the local badminton champion when I was a kid, and there was another girl who used to thrash me for the five days leading up to the tournament and then I would just nail her to the floor in the competition.

My parents' concern has been one of my greatest assets - I needed something to kick against. If they'd supported me every step of the way I might not have had enough fire in my belly to get where I have. Then I think: was this whole thing reverse psychology, did you really go to those lengths?

Getting to know myself changed everything. It's the best thing I've ever done.

I would be happy to live in a world with no mirrors, but at the same time, it's great to look good on stage because you feel you're offering more than just the music.

Albums tend to dictate what they need. Every time I have made an album it sort of feels like it is decided for me how that album is going to sound; it is not really a cerebral decision where you sit down and decide that you are going to make an album that sounds like 'this.'

There was an obvious display of blatant sexism when I couldn't get signed. They didn't say I was ugly. They didn't say that they didn't like the music. They said I was too old! At 26! So Badly Drawn Boy, Doves, Elbow, James Blunt - you can be a gnarly old beardy bloke with a bit of a paunch and that's all right?

What was incredible about the Maldives was that the entire island we were on consisted of sand. There didn't seem to be any dirt. You could walk around for hours barefoot with your white trousers skimming the ground, and they'd still be pristine white.

Life is about embracing the things that make you different, which is often an uncomfortable thing to do.

When my divorce came through, it was like being let out of a cage because I hadn't been true to myself before; I was being something that was expected of me.

I was adopted. I was born in Edinburgh, and adopted when I was about two weeks old. And it's a good thing, I think, really, that back then, in '75 when I was born, you were really given a lot more information than you're given now when you're adopted. And you know, you can access that information when you're older.

My maternal grandmother was Cantonese, so I'm a quarter Chinese and half Irish and a quarter Scottish and raised by English parents living in Scotland.

It feels like your subconscious can be way ahead of you, as a songwriter. You can write a song that you think is about one thing and months later you're playing it and thinking, hang on, this is completely informing where I am now.

I've always loved the idea of 'Guilty Pleasures.'

When I went to university I survived on jacket potatoes and pasta for three years.

The topography of L.A. is fascinating.