P. J. Harvey

As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.

My mother and father are very involved with music. It's completely part of their soul. They have an incredible record collection, all vinyl, of some of the best artists, in my eyes, that you can come across.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.

I don't loathe interviews, I'm just one of those people who makes music because I find it difficult to talk.

I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been so involved in my job of writing songs that the more actively involved part became channeled into standing on the stage and saying things that way.

I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.

I've always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.

There's also a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

In order to make my solo shows as interesting as possible, I moved songs onto very different instruments so that I was moving instruments quite a lot during the set.

I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other.

I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.

My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone.

I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters.

Maybe I'm just purely lucky. If I've come up against obstacles I've always found another way around it.

Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I think I'm a songwriter. I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.

I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.

I'm a Libra. That means that I can make a decision, but only after much thought.