The joy that I feel when I’m on stage, I can’t explain it to anyone. It feels like that first breath of a child. It’s sore and it’s uncomfortable but it’s a sign of life

Being on stage, singing on stage makes me the happiest.

I was embarrassed by it and racked by middle-class guilt. But when you're on stage, if you're trying to be something you're not, it becomes so much harder. It's better to be honest and take every vulnerability and flaw you have, and mock them and deal with them.

You are never so alone as when you are ill on stage. The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people.

Music is my happy place. Music is the only thing that makes me feel truly at home. If I'm sad, it's the only thing I can run to. If someone says to me "here's a billion dollars, just chill" I would still do music. I mean, I'd collect the billion dollars and then do music. That's how bad it is. That's how much I love it.

I think taking the stage is one of the most unnatural things anyone can do. In a way, just walking on stage actually creates an altered state–it's not right, no one's meant to do that, unless you're a priest or a magician, or something like that. To put somebody who's very incapable in many ways in to that position creates a combustion reaction inside me. I know that, and I take the stage knowing that.

When I am on stage something takes over. I become that excited little girl again, who is happy to see people singing and jumping, saying “Oh, they love me,” and at least someone loves me. That child in me comes out and the stage for me is a very nice playground that heals my heart while praising God.

Once in a while I experience an emotion onstage that is so gut-wrenching, so heart-stopping, that I could weep with gratitude and joy. The feeling catches and magnifies so rapidly that it threatens to engulf me.

That was the only time my mother saw me on stage. At one point in the play I am strangled and my mother jumped from her seat and screamed: 'No. You will not get away with murder. You cannot do this to my daughter.' Friends explained to her that this was not for real — that we were acting. But she made such a fuss. Everyone was so embarrassed. On stage my heart sank.

My greatest fear is giving performances. I feel I am responsible for the audience BUT I am also scared of them.

Tonight I am going to defecate on stage because I think that is the only way to express the nature of my soul according to rock and roll.

There’s a moment before I walk out on stage, where it’s like electricity. And then you just go out there and it’s home. The stage is home to me.

I come from the stage so being involved with such a gigantic film was just a new thing for me which I really loved. And for sure I would love to do something like this again. There's lots of things that have opened up for me. I'll just make sure I'll make the wisest decisions because this is a very delicate moment. And someday I will go back to the stage because that's where I feel at home.

So far, I have been a spectator in this theatre which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.