A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life.

Our imagination it is our greatest ally . . . Imagination is a very, very powerful thing. It literally invents the path before you.

In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy - you can be arrested for it. It's risky asking people for money in public. So it's not like it's a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.

I grew up wearing black arm-bands when the hunger strikers died. I went on those marches. I grew up basically a Provo, though I never obviously got into any activities. I was writing 'IRA, Brits out' on walls all over where I grew up, but that was a false sense of Irishness.

I've realized, you know, having turned 40, that rest is just as important as work. In fact, it's equally as important.

My dad was quiet, angry, shut down. So my thing is: I express everything that's there. I want to get it all out.

You know, when I was a kid waiting on the bus, I remember that was when I imagined my life. I imagined everything that I was gonna be when I grew up and I imagined all of these amazing journeys and amazing people Id meet. Of course, all of it has kind of come to fruition.