I only ever really take out my guitar when I'm miserable, which isn't necessarily a very good time to do it.

And I've always loved playing solo.

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

You know, albums are a funny thing. They're not like an intellectual decision. It's a collection of your kind of musings.

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 love the idea of leaving some of the original abstract thought in, because the problem is that when you pick up a pen you become a snob, your own worse critic. You edit yourself in a way that is non-creative.

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.