Glen Hansard

“Well, playing a guy who writes songs and busks on Grafton Street in Dublin and falls in love with Marketa Irglova wasn't very difficult for me. There was very little acting going on.”

“I love the idea of leaving some of the original abstract thought in, because the problem is that when you pick up a pen you become a snob, your own worse critic. You edit yourself in a way that is non-creative.”

“I guess in a way I just feel blessed to be able to make music.”

“I choose to believe that there is good in people and that everything is a lesson. Our place on Earth is to go deeper, to somehow get wiser. To have spirit.”

“Sometimes travelling really intensely for a long time is like having a continuous nervous breakdown.”

“Our imagination just needs space. It's all it needs, that moment where you just sort of stare into the distance where your brain gets to sort of somehow rise up.”

“In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy - you can be arrested for it. It's risky asking people for money in public. So it's not like it's a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.”

“And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.”

“The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.”

“My dad was quiet, angry, shut down. So my thing is: I express everything that's there. I want to get it all out.”

“As a busker, one thing that does not work is self-consciousness. A busker needs to be working. A busker needs to shed all ego and get down to work. Play your songs, play them well, earn your money, and don't get in people's way.”

“If you stand still in any city long enough, you see everyone pass you by. So you're in Chicago. If you stand on the corner of Belmont and Clark, and you do that for three years, you'll pretty much have seen everybody in Chicago pass that junction.”

“Keeping the pen out of your hand as much as possible is the best way to write a song, in my estimation. But the pen must come in to tighten it up.”

“A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life.”

“And I've always loved playing solo.”

“I only ever really take out my guitar when I'm miserable, which isn't necessarily a very good time to do it.”

“If you don't mark your successes, the day your ship comes in could be just another day at the office, and there's no poetry in that.”

“I've always felt that if I ever got cynical, I would have to stop making music because I'd just be poisoning the air.”

“I busked from the age of 13 until I was 18.”

“You know, albums are a funny thing. They're not like an intellectual decision. It's a collection of your kind of musings.”