I have a theory because I was being beaten up a lot by people outside of school it was almost like if I could make myself sick enough they'd take sympathy on me.

Writers as they gain success feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.

With 'Believe' bringing really big success for me outside of the U.K. for the first time it meant I have been touring around the world and that led to a gap from the studio. I really feel like the gap has done me the world of good. Throughout that time I was able to collect songs that I really loved.

The only concept or experience or core belief that I can attribute my other-ness to is that I just started out a weirdo and I stayed a weirdo. And it took me a long time to embrace my outsidership and see it as a strength rather than a weakness.

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

Our very strength as lesbians lies in the fact that we are outside of patriarchy our existence challenges its life.

I think that we had a different view of what the 21st century could be like with much more of a sense from our perspective of trying to have an interdependent world: looking at solving regional conflicts having strength in alliances operating within some kind of a sense that we were part of the international community and not outside of it.

I am so fidgety - I swear I have ADD - and I always need to be doing something or being outside just playing sports.

I do feel like I have always in my life been inclined to be on the outside walk a different path or something. Because of that and increasingly over the years my sense of distance from mainstream society or from the way culture works I have a different kind of perception of it.

The writer is the person who stands outside society independent of affiliation and independent of influence.