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" There was a moment, a few weeks after I signed, that it actually hit me. I was signed to a major label. "

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" Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance. "

" I've been a total Tom Waits dork for a long, long time. "

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

" If I fall into a city, I fall into a scene, and I just don't want to get distracted and enjoy myself too much. There's too much work to be done. "

" I love a good party - but I'm not all that attracted to a celebrity lifestyle. "

" 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. "

" When you play to an audience, you come away energized. It's the promo that really breaks an artist. Some lad sitting on a box trying to create a drum sound in a dry little studio. Everyone goes, 'Great - okay, now on with my day.' You go back to the bus, and you weep. "

" I think it's very hard to write things about being joyful. I find that quite difficult. I think when you're happy, you don't want to write songs; you just want to enjoy being happy. "

" When I first started to sing, I just swung at it with an axe. "

" The best vocalists I can think of are female. "

" The more I come to L.A., the more it's amazing. "

" The best vocalists I can think of are female. There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she's merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness - even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it. "

" Religion wasn't imposed on me. "

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

" Either somebody has equal rights, or they don't. And certainly in the Irish constitution, marriage is genderless. There's no mention of a man and a woman. "

" 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. "

" One of my biggest influences of all time would be somebody like Tom Waits. David Bowie is another huge influence. I'm also a big fan of St. Vincent and Leslie Feist. "

" It's funny: Your relationship changes with a song over time. After a year or so, you're a different person, so your songs, you don't connect with them like you did. "

" I tried to avoid anything that caused me frustration or grief or duress. I played FarmVille and procrastinated like all teenagers. "

" If I don't think something's worth saying, I don't think it's quite there, I'd rather just not say it, to be honest. In that case, I'd rather wait 'till the thought is ready, 'till I feel like I'm happy with everything. "

" It's kind of strange to hear your songs sung back to you! You get a big insight into what people connect to, what's moving to people or what songs people are really into. "

" When I write songs, I try to remove myself a little bit. Obviously, they're very personal to me, but it feels easier if I feel like I'm writing characters. "

" I remember writing lyrics for 'Take Me to Church' for a long time before I even had a song in mind for. It's not that I was trying to write that song for a year, but sometimes you just kind of collect lyrical and musical ideas and don't actually complete the song until you feel like they work together and have a home. "

" You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society. "

" 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. "

" Growing up in Ireland, there are a lot of aspects of God that hang in the air. And my music reflects that. "

" My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me. "

" Blues is a very physical music. "

" I found the experience of falling in love or being in love was a death: a death of everything. You kind of watch yourself die in a wonderful way, and you experience for the briefest moment - if you see yourself for a moment through their eyes - everything you believed about yourself gone. In a death-and-rebirth sense. "

" I spent quite a bit of time in choirs, growing up, and in the world-touring music group Anuna. "