"The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work."

"I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking."

"You've got a big, big problem if you get caught up in what people say. If you're gonna live for what people say, you might as well lay down and forget it. Because it doesn't work that way."

"There's certainly pressure to find your audience early. You need to paint the picture, but it's tough trying to find the balance between a show that people can tune in on any given week while still grabbing the people who are there every week."

"I feel this music has nurtured me as I've been immersing myself in it. I've felt supported by it."

"I've been trying to learn how to not be so conflicted about things like my own anger. I've always had a place in my music for my anger as a way of compensating for not having a mechanism to express it in my everyday life. So I've been trying to be more true to myself, and that helps me to chill out a little bit. But politically, uh-uh. No."

"A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano."