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What I see as specially English is the charm - everyone is so polite. Being restrained is part of the charm. And I love the sense of humour - it takes me back to Australia. The English are great at making fun of themselves. They're so self-effacing.

Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it.

Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too.

Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English.

Some of the substance of English words, I just don't understand at all because the culture's so strange to me.

I've always felt very English.

The air of the English is down-to-earth. They care about details; there's a tradition, but there's also a counter-culture: the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that's well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.

Conventional is not for me. I like things that are uniquely Flo. I like being different.

People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.