I also like a lot of silence, and when you're touring, it's constantly noise, all the time, you're surrounded with 15 or 20 people the entire time. I find that tough.
The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it.
I like to be around things that I find inspiring.
I like things that are beaten up, that have lived a little. I like things that are real. I like things that are made out of wood or string. I never feel very responsive to plastic machinery.
I knew what I didn't want to do- that's always my starting point. The starting point is always that I don't want to repeat myself. Or I try my best not to, with varying degrees of success.
I don't like things to be handed to me on a plate; that means nothing. I like to go through layers of unraveling and every time I listen to something, it makes me feel something different. Now I'm aware of the conflict that's going on, but at the time I just let what was happening happen.
I feel that my dreamscapes are part of my everyday life, and sometimes I can't tell the difference.
If I ever meet a writer or a painter, I don't presuppose that they are like the work they are presenting.
I think it does surprise me a bit when people have a very fixed idea of what I'm like, based upon the work that I do, which is something that is very separate.
Folk music was to strengthen and unify people, whether it was through an uprising and rebellion or whether is was through hard work, bringing in crops. But it was to strengthen each other and that's still what music is about today.
It's good to feel excited by the environment you're in.
I never feel that I have to adopt a character. It's more the way I choose to present the music and that's always based on what is right for the song.
I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage.
I've always been very interested in the visual aspect of what I do.
You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me.
In the past members of my family on both my mother's and father's side have fought in the war, in the first and second World Wars. Unfortunately, they're dead and I wasn't able to speak to them, but that was in our family history too.
Any of these contemporary war situations, whether civilian or soldier on either side - that's what I was interested in. The people who are being affected. Not so much the political speak at the top of the food chain, but the people who are affected by it on the ground.
Writing is something that I practice at every day to get better at.
I think you have to be very careful getting the balance right if you're going to talk about grand themes like war, death and nationhood. You need to use the right language or don't do it at all.
I've always been very politically interested from a very young age and I hadn't felt that was something I could begin to bring into my songwriting because I hadn't felt I'd reached the stage, that I had the skill with language enough, yet, to do that.
It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent.
Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply.
I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.
I would listen most particularly to the countries whose language I didn't understand, didn't know what they were singing. But being a singer myself, I could understand because of the emotion.
Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: