Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Every time I do an interview, it's like serious therapy. But real therapy isn't something that I'd ever have. I feel fortunate that mentally everything is functioning well.
I don't think about Norfolk as I write songs, sadly no! But things like 'High' is a song about watching the dawn come up over the sea, and I've had many of those situations.
I found in my writing that I could express emotions that, as an everyday person, I have no interest in expressing: these strange things that girls talk about called feelings.
I am very happy to say I look just like my dad. But mothers always think their children are prettier than they really are, and mine has always told me I look like Tom Cruise.
I generally read everything about me. Based on my army experience, I think it's the right thing to do. Saddam Hussein didn't read his reviews and thought he was winning the war.
I don't know how to write without thinking what people would want. You don't know whether they want you to be black or white, so you kind of get a gray, something in the middle.
We are in the entertainment business. This should be fun. We are musicians; we don't save lives. We shouldn't... we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously or be revered that much.
Will you be my shoulder when I'm gray and older? Promise me tomorrow starts with you. Getting high, running wild among the stars above. Sometimes it's hard to believe you remember me.
My dad was in the Army. The Army's not great pay, but, you know, we moved from Army patch to Army patch wherever that was. The Army also contributed to sending me off to boarding school.
My guitar survived Kosovo, then I went to visit a record company back in London and fell off my motorbike with it on my back, smashing it to bits. I was travelling at two miles per hour.
I have fun with it and I am honest and open about the way I lead my life and don't mislead anyone. I've had the time of my life and thank God for that, it would be such a waste otherwise.
This will be my first visit [to Israel]. I've heard it's a special place, that Tel Aviv is exciting and that the atmosphere is excellent....I hope I'll have time to visit the holy places.
I'm a fairly unaffected human being. I'm easy to talk to, I hope. I'm not too bothered about the clothes I'm wearing. I've been misquoted in interviews as to appear earnest. Which I am not.
I'm always ready for the enemy to come over the hill. I'm packed and set to go. That comes from my time in the army. I used to travel in a tank, but now it's a tour bus going to safer places.
I think sensitive is the wrong description of me. I'm British, actually, so quite bad at expressing myself in conversation, as any ex-girlfriend will tell you. I'm probably emotionally stunted.
I've always been independent. My father was in the army, so we moved every two years. I had to go round and bang on the neighbour's door each time to find out if they had kids I could play with.
I do have a ski lift named after me in Sweden... It's an honour. I got to smash a bottle against the first pillar and say, 'I name this chairlift James Blunt. God bless her and all who rides me.'
It's taken a long time but eventually when I had the songs in place and demos right and I found myself a manager, that's when everything started happening quickly but I think that's always the way it is.
School was pretty good about letting me take up music and that's where I had my first musical ideas and first said, 'Yeah, I'm going to be a musician.' I just had to do a quick stop gap in the army first.
We see differences in people and seem to be afraid of people. The black or white or gay or straight - I don't necessarily look for differences but for similarities. We need to be looking out for each other.
Carrie Fisher was the most remarkable person I've ever known. I made my first three albums in her house. 'Goodbye My Lover' was recorded in her bathroom. My life will not be nearly as much fun now she's gone.
As a singer-songwriter who gets up on stage and sings about those things that make me vulnerable is an amazing experience. You get up on stage and effectively take your clothes off in front of thousands of people.
Being sent away to boarding school at seven is as great an inspiration as any songwriter could have - to be taken away from one's family and locked away for 10 years. It does create an incredible intensity of emotion.
My grandparents live in Cley, and my dad now has the windmill which is a guest house. So I've spent much time up there, but a lot of it was at school as well, and my dad was sent abroad so often as well with the army.
I have friends who were friends of mine before I did music and they are my friends now, and we share life experiences. It's no fun unless you're sharing with people, looking out for them as they are looking out for you.
Like any parents, mine wanted me to have a secure job with a regular wage and career prospects. And the one job my father knew of, that he'd had experience of himself, was the army, so he could help me in that direction.
I don't agree with superstitious routines, but there are a couple of things I'll always do before performing. I'll get together with the band and chill out, and then, just before I go on stage, I'll always check my flies.
I think having toured the world and seeing many places, I've just been blown away by how we've really scarred our home. I'm as guilty as the next person if not more so. I travel a lot. The damage we do to our planet is huge.
Absolutely, it's a really weird stage because at the minute, I can walk down the street and be unrecognised, lead a normal life, but my label and everybody is warning me that will be changing and I'm in for a rollercoaster ride.
I stopped doing interviews for a long time because the words were mine, but they were in the wrong order. Context is a very important thing - a lot of the things I say aren't serious, and so to remove the laughter does me no favours.
In a way song writing can almost be detrimental, because suddenly you find an outlet that is a kind of cheating. You don't need to have direct communication. You can say, 'I can't describe it to you, but I will record it and send it to you.'
I relax by catching up with my friends and family. When I am at home in Ibiza, I find the contrast of living on a divided island relaxing - with beauty and tranquillity in the north and a sense of fun, shallowness and celebration in the south.
I'm quite British in the sense of not expressing my emotions much. I save it for my songs. If you ask about a death in the family, or a lover, I will not be emotional. I'd probably answer with a smile. Because that's what we British blokes do.
My mum was very good at making me take up musical instruments, so although there was no popular music she made me learn the recorder when I was three, the violin when I was five and the piano when I was seven. I took up the guitar myself when I was 14.
I like 'Goodbye My Lover' because it's a really personal song and I recorded it in my landlady's bathroom in Los Angeles. She had a piano in there and for me listening back to it, it actually sounds like the voice I hear in my head. It's so close to what I can imagine.
I used to have an eBay addiction. I was really good at selling stuff. My sister needed to get to a funeral in Ireland - the airlines were on strike - so I listed her on eBay: damsel in distress. Guys were outbidding guys to be the hero and help her. A guy who owned a helicopter won.
I am a troll. And do you know what? I really don't like social media apart from that aspect of it. Posting pictures of me doing this or that is really boring, but I enjoy engaging with people. I tell them it's just a laugh and to stay in touch if you're getting any grief. They're just opinions.
The weird thing about the subway is no one looks at each other. So I play the O2 in London. It's a 20,000 capacity venue, and then I'll take the subway to my gig, and everyone's going to my gig, and no one looks at you. If anyone does, they say, 'Hey, you look exactly like James Blunt, only smaller.'
I don't think I was ever designed to be a ubiquitous worldwide star. I'm a singer-songwriter writing quite personal songs. You're not supposed to chuck me on a stage with bells and whistles. There was a struggle ahead after that happened, and perhaps I was trying to write songs to compete in that arena.
I think I was lucky to be a little older when I became famous. But still, the shock of the world starting to treat you in a weird way... I had come from the army, where we had to deal with life or death, and suddenly, people were asking whether you were cool or not. I have never cared about whether I'm cool.
If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can focus on the darker art of the record label and the music industry.
Sometimes, reading my own media, the negativity can upset me, but I just deal with things on a positive basis. I mean, I have up to 20,000 people singing my words back to me on a nightly basis - they share my hopes and fears, and they relate to my own life experiences. Life can be pretty isolating, but that connection is always amazing.
There's a lot of music nowadays with people singing about how amazing their clothes are and how incredible their shoes are and how much jewelry they might be wearing or how much jewelry they want, how much money they have and the club that they're in and the alcohol that they're drinking. I think that's showing off. I don't think it's necessarily all that honest or all that interesting.