Its always important to fall back on your instincts and core beliefs and that was pretty hard for me to do but trusting in my self the way I trusted that if I were to sit at a piano for two hours and I was going learn something, that trust I'd put in myself really helped me get through it. For five to six months I just wrote songs and believed they would turn out to be things I could be proud of and be happy.

Music is really everything I know. To be honest every experience I've ever had has been brought up from music and everything I do is because of music. I don't know anything else, I think about music before I go to sleep and it just really is everything that I am.

I like what I like, I don't like what I don't like, and I'm very bad at toning myself down.

I'm an introspective human being and someone who likes to be alone in a room. The idea of going out and talking to people...there's something appealing about it, but also there's something that feels alien to me, as a cynical Irish man.

The idea of trying to predict what people will or won't respond to is risky.

I never looked at being a musician any different than waking up one day and wanting to be an accountant or a lawyer.

My love of R&B and hip-hop has influenced my life not even as a musician, but generally in terms of growing up and looking to America as an inspiration.