Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.

We saw too much beauty to be cynical, felt too much joy to be dismissive, climbed too many mountains to be quitters, kissed too many girls to be deceivers, saw too many sunrises not to be believers, broke too many strings to be pro's and gave too much love to be concerned where it goes.

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.

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

I just didn't realize, being a young person, that if you sign up to make a film, a certain portion of your soul is forever gone. From there on, you are that character to everybody you'll ever meet again.

If you don't mark your successes, the day your ship comes in could be just another day at the office, and there's no poetry in that.

I pick up my guitar and play. Something might come, and then the pen comes out. Then an edit, until something comes out that you're actually satisfied with.