When I've got a girlfriend, I like to be with them as much as possible, and I'm very affectionate.

I think Justin Bieber and Zayn have both been listening to me a lot, and they basically wanna be me.

Kurt Cobain is one of the reasons I started doing music because I just loved to watch them rock out.

I want to help people to get to know my story and really tell them in detail what I've been through.

I've made mistakes, and I'm very aware of them, and I've tried to better myself from those mistakes.

The thing is, I knew from the very first audition that I did not fit the classic 'X Factor' criteria.

I'm a mix; I'm sure some of my Canadian friends find me very American, both in person and on the page.

I had some glamour models messaging me on Twitter and saying they think I'm hot, but I'm being careful.

I went from absolutely nothing to a lot of people judging me overnight, and it was really tough for me.

Yes I got into things with girls who only liked me because of who I was. But I learnt my lesson quickly.

All my confidence has disappeared because the whole nation thinks I'm a homophobe who looks like a monster.

I want to say sorry for abusing my position as an 'X Factor' winner because I owe everything to this thing.

I want to put out music I really believe in, and when I felt that was threatened, I lashed out at everybody.

I'm trying this thing where I don't regret as much 'cause it doesn't really work that well to regret things.

I'm a Honey G fan. She can spit some vibes on one of my songs; she's got rhymes for days! She's gangster. I love her.

One of my fans made a lifelike doll of me. It was incredible - it looked just like me - but an effigy is kinda weird.

Everybody's gone through some kind of struggle in their life, and I'd like to be the type of voice who talks about it.

My Number 1 Award is going to go on my mantelpiece, and I'll probably kiss it for two weeks solid every time I pass it!

My first instinct is always to fight back because ever since I was a kid, that's what I've always had to do to survive.

I'm just achieving goals left, right and centre, and I just feel incredibly lucky because I never thought it would happen.

I didn't realise how devastating my behavior could be - looking back, I'm very embarrassed. I just buckled under the anxiety.

I don't have anything against SyCo or 'X Factor' or any of that. I'm just a guy who got really afraid of not being in control.

I do own CDs by Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell, but I don't think of them as being major influences on my writing.

Me and my mum didn't see eye-to-eye for a lot of years, and I've never really felt connected with my dad, because he wasn't there.

I don't see why a poem couldn't be spoken out a car window or written on the beach at low tide. In fact, I'm sure people are doing it.

Being in bands and plugging away with not many opportunities and no money for many years really shaped me and taught me about work ethic.

It can feel like your whole world is caving in on you, and if you don't speak about it, it gets worse. You have to talk about your problems.

If poems very different from my own bring pleasure to a group of readers, who am I to say that the poems should have been written differently?

I like poems that affect me emotionally and also provoke me to further, deeper thought. I enjoy challenge, but not, I think, for its own sake.

I always made my songs very conversational, and if anyone ever has a conversation with me, they know I'm a very open guy, very open and honest.

I have been through and seen so many dramas and traumas and been in so many situations that I can probably interpret a few different characters.

As a species, we create tools to control our environment. What excites my imagination is wilderness: our materials' ability to escape our control.

Whenever I visit my family in Canada, I remind myself that what many Americans would consider forthright, many Canadians would consider overbearing.

Not only was I an 'X Factor' winner that got dropped by Syco - and when that happens, you're never heard of again - but everyone thought I was a clown.

I'd like to think that maybe the average person is rational, and they realise that I'm not this crazy monster that, at times, I've been perceived to be.

I was having anxiety attacks, calling ambulances out and saying I was having a heart attack, as there was something weird going on with my body and mind.

In my case, performance is part of the medium. Sometimes I feel that it's my main medium, and that the presentation of my poems on the page is secondary.

Poetry isn't an efficient tool for preserving experience, any more than it's an efficient mode of communication, but who says that it should be efficient?

I often write from memory by walking around and talking to myself. Even when I'm working at a computer I write out loud, so that I can hear the poem's rhythm.

I want to reiterate that my understanding of the poem is not the poem's core, true meaning. Once a poem goes out into the world, the poet is just one more reader.

Having watched 'X Factor' over the years, they just haven't got it right. The male winners haven't been believable. They look like puppets; they sound like puppets.

For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.

I think that being mindful of your own biases tends to lead you into ambiguity, not clarity, and that following those ambiguities is the only way to approach the universal.

I had a style before I was signed, but now I'm developing my commercial sound as well as trying to strike a balance between authentic music and music that the masses will love.

People were telling me it was refreshing I was real because previous 'X Factor' winners were too afraid to say anything. I decided to go against the grain. But I took it too far.

When I'm most deeply involved in my writing, sometimes I do dream about poetry, and occasionally I wake up from a dream with a phrase that I like well enough to put it in a poem.

Maybe because I can't even put together an IKEA desk, I've never been tempted to think of my own poems as built objects - but I do sometimes imagine them as mathematical constructs.

When I started reciting my own poems in public, I worried that it would seem too theatrical, but now I find recitation very natural, because it allows me to address audiences directly.

For me, intuitive thinking means associative thinking; intuition causes us to introduce narrative or figurative elements into a poem before we're able to explain why those elements belong.

I think Sam Smith's dad got a huge loan or something to help his career. Those things can help artists get attention, but I guess my song 'Say You Won't Let Go' proved it's about the song.

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