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

Sadness is a very interesting idea, this idea of sadness being some kind of default setting that artists will go into. And then I started thinking about this idea of sadness and happiness, and the idea that sadness is very loud, and happiness is quiet.

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

There are people who can sit down and write a song about any given subject, and they can do it really, really well.

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 absolutely adore the alchemy of a bit of an idea.

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