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" I'd love to do something with somebody like James Blake. "

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" One of my favorite books is 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' by George Orwell, and 'Catcher in the Rye,' obviously, is a big influence and is one of my favorites. "

" Truth be told, I'm not all that comfortable with celebrity culture. That was always something that baffled me, the obsession over fame. I don't think that's a reason why anyone should get into making music. "

" I have very strong feelings about a lot of things. I am sometimes reluctant to come straight to the forefront with it. You know, first and foremost, I'm a musician. I'm a songwriter. "

" Blues is a very physical music. "

" No Facebook status is as worrying as a vote and no tweet is as noticeable as an angry cry from a crowd outside a government building. "

" There's not a lot of room for thinking in popular culture; there's not a lot of room for being conflicted. "

Popular Culture

" I'm still finding my feet in many ways as a performer. I'm not an extrovert, and certainly the attention isn't what drew me to it, and I find that quite jarring at times. I used to stress a lot about shows and get palpitations before shows, but eventually you learn to love it, and it is a thrill. "

" I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll. "

" Someone had an eye on me as I was leaving high school. I had a chance to record demos, but they were kind of wanting to make a pop singer out of me, of the 'X Factor' variety. I didn't feel comfortable with it. I wanted to be a songwriter. "

" I'm reading a lot of poetry because it's a lot easier to dip in and dip out when you've got 10 minutes to yourself. "

" I've definitely received a lot of support in Nashville; it's a huge music town. I like country music. Like any genre I'm largely unfamiliar with, there are elements I really enjoy and elements that go over my head. "

" Biggest musical influences would be people like Nina Simone and Tom Waits. A huge amount of writers like Leslie Feist and Paul Simon. "

" I didn't even have that many close LGBT friends or anything like that, but I suppose it was growing up and becoming aware of how you are in a cultural landscape that is blatantly homophobic... you turn around and say, 'Why did I grow up in a homophobic place? Why did I grow up in a misogynistic place?' "

" I love Muddy Waters and Nina Simone. I also watched 'The Blues Brothers' movie over and over. "

" I'm uncomfortable with selfies and status updates documenting mundane pieces of my life, which I don't think should be of interest to anyone else. "

" Some of the earlier stuff I did in studio with producers was very pop-directed, which I was uncomfortable with. "

" Things were never as exciting for me as the first gig in New York. "

" The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does. "

" Much of social media can be seen as the 'News of me.' It's not so much a platform for connecting and sharing as it is a platform for advertising the idea of yourself you want to portray to others: the image of yourself you want to project. "

" By nature, I'm an awkward person; I'm a gangly introvert. "

" I think it is important to differentiate between lip service towards something and actually making change. "

" I had just discovered jazz, and I started singing in a kind of blues cover band at the age of 15. We called ourselves - it was a terrible name - the Blue Zoots. We couldn't actually get our hands on zoot suits, nor did we dress in blue. We did covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and kind of Blues Brothers repertoire stuff. "

" Love isn't any one good thing; it's a very, very strange mishmash of emotions. Your love for somebody is, oftentimes, informed by the terrible things you might believe about yourself, and comparatively, the person you see them as is everything that you're not. "

" There are a lot of recurring themes that I resonated with when I read 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.' "

" We have such a culture of discrimination and hatred, and one that has scapegoats and affects people so extremely. That's something that very easily crosses borders. "

" I was never academically driven in English, but, again, Tom Waits is a perfect example of an influence. He writes so immaculately and paints so perfectly a world and the characters within it. There are writers like that who are my influences: vivid and gifted storytellers. "

" I'm quite tame as touring musicians go. "

" It was amazing for me to even perform at the Grammys, but to do so alongside Annie Lennox was a truly incredible honor. "

" The main thing is, I can't stay up late partying when I'm on tour. That's not good for my voice or my health in general. "

" The myth of fame and the myth of success is cultivated because it is monetisable and it is profitable. "