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

Sometimes travelling really intensely for a long time is like having a continuous nervous breakdown.

As a busker, one thing that does not work is self-consciousness. A busker needs to be working. A busker needs to shed all ego and get down to work. Play your songs, play them well, earn your money, and don't get in people's way.

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 won't say I've closed the door on acting.

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.