"I was woken up in the middle of the night at about 5:30 in the morning or something. And a woman's voice was singing it to me. She was African, quite ancient. And I couldn't understand any of the words, but she was humming the first couple phrases. So I crawled out of bed and found my way to the piano and I put in on a little ghetto blaster so I wouldnt forget it and in the next few weeks I started to shape it. It wasn't about one event. It was clear to me that there was this endless determination that the song had to reach her love. And I don't know if that was a child or a lover or a friend who the song couldn't seem to be able to make contact with anymore. So when I finally found, and I was looking through a map and when I look for lyrics I go hunting. So, as I was looking through all the maps and finding places, I was looking on maps of Dartmoor and I was working with a lot of different regions. And finally it hit me, that it was through the solar field and it wasn't listed on the maps. Because I was being dragged away from the maps to go to sort of a physics book, actually an astronomy book, a book on all sorts of laws and principles of the universe that Marcel had. And, as I finally found solar field it was like I started to feel her jump up and down. Sometimes the songs do that. You get a sense of that they really are alive. So, my husband had lost his father and he would swing by where I was playing and he would say to me, can you play that little song about the oceans? And that seemed to be sort of a way that we would talk about his dad when no other words could work. So, I think it means different things for different people. But the sense that I got was I couldn't measure the amount of love that this song had for the person that she was singing it about. And it was quite...it moved me. It was like a resolve, an endless resolve to follow her love. And, she's not a stalker by the way." - AOL Online Chat 9/29/99

"An old African woman was humming it to me at 5:30 in the morning in my sleep. I went down to the piano..She was pretty ancient, and I couldn't understand a word she was saying, so I had to figure the words out. What I kind of got from it was the depth of lust that song had for somebody or something - it could be for this planet, I don't know. But the idea that this voice that was coming through very clear, finally I understood when I got the phrase 'through the solar field.' It all completely aligned, because I knew we were following maps: I was hunting down what the song was trying to tell me...You know, there's always galactic reference going on in this record. There's a scientific vocabulary going on in this record. 'Suede' is about seduction, but there's always a science reference, a physics reference, because that's the realm of Venus. So I hung maps all over, and I knew I didn't have it right, coming up with things. Then finally I got that whatever dimensions the song had to cross to find the being that she was devoted to, whether it was her mother or her sister or her lover or her friend, nothing could stop her. That kind of resilience was a real anchor for the record." - All Music 10/99

"But there was a moment when I knew that, 'I can't believe that I would keep, keep you from flying'. I kept circling that and circling that, never knowing how I would get out of it. Then to finally go up, 'and I would cry 1,000 more', it took me weeks to get there. It was real tortuous to find that, because I didn't know how I was gonna get past 'keep you from flying.' I didn't know, lyrically or musically. So finally, 'and I would cry 1,000 more' - and it had to sound like it. She had to have progressed to that; she had to have done that musically. And 'home' (from the next lyric) had to be something. What's 'home'? Well, 'home' had to be G minor." - All Music 10/99

"Take '1,000 Oceans' on 'Venus and Back'; I had a dream at 5 and a half in the morning of an African woman's voice, excessively tribal. It wasn't a language I knew. I only understood the melody and it only had a few measures. I went to my piano, in the dark, and recorded 2 measures on a small tape recorder, which is always on the instrument. I sculpted the song during the following weeks, looking at Mark who just lost his father. Until the day when, striked by what I played in the living room, he said 'Could you replay this song about oceans?'...There was a moment when I realized I saw different pictures than him about this song. I felt a deep love feeling when he 'came in' the song, associating it to the memory and search of his father, because we don't know where those who leave this earth go. Sometimes, the love feelings of my songs come from someone else and I'm just there to look at it." - Best Magazine 10/99

"I didn't know that passion could spread to friendship, to a marriage. 'I've cried a thousand oceans And I would cry a thousand more if that's what it takes to sail you home.' To know that you feel that for somebody--you know that the bodysnatchers haven't taken all of you yet." - Mojo 10/99

"Some months ago, as I was working on my new double album in Bude in Cornwall, I had a really important dream. A voice appeared in my head. I call her my dark angel. She was a soulsister, who sang in my head. She was humming a melody to me. It was about half past five or six o'clock in the morning. I got out of bed and went over to the studio. In the country, the people there leave everything unlocked. So the studio was open. I went in and recorded the melody. From this melody the song 1000 Oceans developed. I worked very long on it until it was finished. Sometimes it takes an incredible amount of time for me to understand a song I have recorded. Because I am so much in it and I can't distance myself from it. Sometimes I don't really understand my songs until I go on tour and live with them. They are like girls for me that keep me accompanied. But sometimes I only understand my songs through the reactions of other people. This was the case with 1000 Oceans. Mark had just lost his father. The two were very close, because Mark was an only child. Before the death of my father-in-law they talked on the phone everyday. His father fooled us into believing he was getting better. He had cancer and one day he was just dead. It was a shock for Mark, because he had really believed it got better. They had already made plans for his father to come to visit us in the USA. He had never been there. After the old man had died my relationship with Mark got very difficult. He was inconsolable. You can't do much for somebody who has lost the most important person in his life. I often held him in my arms and took long walks with him. I was just there for him a lot. But I never really got through to him. I still have my mother and my father so I didn't have the experience. I only reached him with 1000 Oceans. After Mark heard the song, he always came to me, sat down next to the piano and said: 'Please, play that song again.' And I played it to him. Through that we got in contact once again. I took him back from that other galaxy he was in a million miles away from me. So that dream was very special to me. It renewed the connection between Mark and me." - Die Zeit 11/11/99

(video) "(the director) is French, and the riot scene was his idea. We were in LA, part of a riot he was creating, and my god, some of those guys got really banged up...but you know guys bruising, they got empathy from all the make-up artists and women on the set." - MTV's 120 minutes 11/15/99

"(To Venus And Back is) about the power that flows from the passion. Power that you can use for better or worse. Like the evil in the song Juarez, which deals with the monsters we turn into when our hearts are broken. Its about the murder on two hundred women in a small town at the border with Mexico. When I was touring through Texas, I was really near it, and the story grabbed me. I immediately wrote the song, in the bus. The song gives you a different look on the things I wrote years ago in Me And A Gun. But both songs are about the things you can do, when your heart thinks there is no other choice. Theres a line in 1000 oceans: Ive cried a thousand oceans and I would cry a thousand more / If thats what it takes to sail you home. If you know youre capable of feeling that for somebody you know that the bodysnatchers dont have you yet." - Aloha 11/99

"(I was) sleeping and at 5:30 in the morning, this voice was humming this to me. You know, maybe I have to give it polishing I don't know, but anyway. The thing is, I toodled over to the piano and I tried to put it down and I couldn't get the words. And when she came to visit me, the thing that really got me was the amount of love that she had for this person she was singing about. And that really...I don't know...to see that depth of love sometimes in a song because I told you they're hussies so not all of them have that kind of love. But she's a different creature." - FNX AIDS Benefit 12/03/99

"In the song (1000 Oceans) there is this ferocious commitment to finding this person. I don't know who the song is singing about - it's different for different people when they hear it. She has this depth of love for a daughter or whoever it is. I think some of the other songs look to her sometimes for that kind of resilience." - VH1 Wire Feature 12/99

"You don't just walk into the Winter's and the 1000 Ocean's because they are difficult to deliver (live). There has to be fluidity to pull that off. At the same time you have to have your own personal rhythm, you can't let the audience determine it for you. You don't make records by committee, just like you don't do shows with other people setting your pace for you. Although sometimes if I know it'll be a moment of love, I'll give them what they want." - Attitude 10/01