Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You just wake up and make music.
I'm learning on the guitar all the time.
I've traveled quite a lot and become a coffee nut.
I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.
I didn't really learn how to play guitar until I was in college.
I have no interest in making music that's built for an antique shop.
I was never a 'sit down with a notepad and write lyrics' kind of person.
Music is a self-propelling thing. You can not rely on anybody but yourself.
The idea of trying to predict what people will or won't respond to is risky.
I have some vivid memories of walking around as a child with a cassette tape.
You get one chance to make an impression and coasting through is a disservice.
You get one chance to make an impression, and coasting through is a disservice.
I'm very ambitious, musically - I want to create great things, not mediocre work.
I don't know about folk music. I play guitar, so there's a feeling I make folk music.
I like what I like, I don't like what I don't like, and I'm very bad at toning myself down.
I don't know if I'm attention deficit, but I certainly am easily distracted by other things.
I don't function well in certain aspects of society, and you can read into that what you will.
Sometimes my hands they don’t feel like my own; I need someone to love, I need someone to hold.
The only thing that's ever made sense to me has been sitting in the house by myself making music.
I think sitting in the car with your parents and listening to music is an essential to growing up.
Life is short. I'm here to make music, I'm not here to sit on a beach. That sounds really boring to me.
I really wanted to approach performing live differently than most people who just play guitar and sing.
My favorite records are not easy - they're not records that reveal everything to you the first time out.
I grew up in a place called Malahide, which is by the water and is beautifully quiet, leafy, and part serene.
I'm mostly a keep-to-myself kind of guy, but you slowly find yourself getting folded into the musical tapestry.
With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.
I never looked at being a musician any different than waking up one day and wanting to be an accountant or a lawyer.
I never was the front man in any bands I played in when I was in college, and I always learned music by myself at home.
I didn't start playing music really until I was 18/19, so it was a relatively new thing. I didn't play much music in school.
I want to talk about things that are tangible and real to me, but I also want to do them in a way that's poetic and artistic.
It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do.
Food in Dublin has gotten immeasurably better than it was. When I was a kid, there weren't a lot of options. Now you're overwhelmed with options.
When I started out making music I thought it was about thrills and adding layers, but I realized I want to focus on saying the most with the least.
You play a couple of shows, and these label guys come - and they leave halfway through a show. Then the phone calls just stop. And your heart is broken.
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.
I feel the reasons my songs might seem dark is because of how I viewed the situations I was in and it was just something I always felt like documenting.
You can batter your guitar, and it won't distort too much, which is important for me because I play with my hands a lot - I don't really play with picks.
It bothers me when musicians listen to music from the '60s and try and recreate it. Those people weren't trying to recreate music from the '20s. Why do it?
What we understand to be profoundness, or importance, it changes. It should change. It should be this moment where you cannot believe that equalled grandness or importance.
I heard of this Texas studio. The owner, Tony Rancich, wanted to fly us out for the day to see the studio. I booked it the next day. He's that rare guy that is in it purely for the love of it.
Hip-hop has been the guiding light of my life as a musician and a music fan. It's the one common thread through all of it from the time I bought my first record probably. It's always been there.
I remember always looking forward to listening to country music in the car with my mother, and it wasn't even something I enjoyed in the sense of music, but just being around music itself was enough.
I've got an Avalon guitar - that's the company that used to be Lowden. They come out of Ireland, and they're like these folk kind of guitars. You can pick 'em, you can strum 'em - they're quite good.
I do not think good art comes from comfort. While from a humanistic standpoint I would have much rather been at my home that I own, surrounded by friends and family and controlling my environment completely.
When I first saw Drake, I thought I was never going to like him based on the person that I saw on T.V. He's just so full on, and he's got the ladies' man thing, which isn't necessarily something that would resonate with me.
I have a vision for everything that I make, but... I'm not that considerate about what I do. I do whatever is in my head and how it ends up tends to be the thing that it's supposed to be. It was never a premeditated decision.
I think it's safe to say that if you talk to anybody in Ireland, they'll have a passing knowledge of the guitar. It was something that I couldn't get away from when I was younger: guitars played in shops and parties, just everywhere.
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.
I feel if I wanted to be taken seriously I have to study music the same way someone who wants to be a doctor would study medicine. You have to know your craft and by doing so I had to make sure to ignore what people were thinking as well.
I approach every show from the same fundamental perspective: this is a conversation, and my job is to make people leave the show feeling like they've seen something singular. It's not about smashing someone over the head from the jump-off.