I was probably about fourteen I think, and probably like every boy who's fourteen that writes a song, it was about a girl. It was about a girl who I really liked, but she didn't like me as much as I liked her. I think most guys go through that.

But you talk to most filmmakers and it is six, seven, eight years trying to get things off the ground. It is incredible really.

Sometimes the songs you think will be best don't turn out to be best.

I think I have a gift... but I haven't really opened that gift yet and given it to myself.

Strangely enough, the first time I tried to read [The Lord of the Rings] I was on holiday in Florida. I dropped it in the pool my first day there. If that's not a Pippin thing to do, I don't know what is.

I think once you get it in your head, that you're not going to do anything bigger, you just do things that you enjoy, which has always been my ethos anyway.

After I've been in America for a while, I get homesick for Scotland.