Hozier

“For me growing up, I had a Christian upbringing, and I just noticed this Catholic influence in school.”

“I found the experience of falling in love or being in love was a death: a death of everything. You kind of watch yourself die in a wonderful way, and you experience for the briefest moment - if you see yourself for a moment through their eyes - everything you believed about yourself gone. In a death-and-rebirth sense.”

“The main thing is, I can't stay up late partying when I'm on tour. That's not good for my voice or my health in general.”

“I like playing with light and shade. I like saying awful things in very pretty ways.”

“I love a good party - but I'm not all that attracted to a celebrity lifestyle.”

“The public discourse online is not done through the polite language of debate.”

“All songs, all pieces of art, reflect the world that they were made in and the values of those artists and the hopes and aspirations of the people who listen to that music and who made that music.”

“By the time I was in my teens, I was listening to Delta blues and jazz.”

“Certainly in the case of having to answer questions about where a song comes from, it's a hell of a lot easier when you say, 'I've removed myself from it.' But they start from quite a personal place. They always do.”

“There are a lot of recurring themes that I resonated with when I read 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.'”

“I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll.”

“The myth of fame and the myth of success is cultivated because it is monetisable and it is profitable.”

“If I don't think something's worth saying, I don't think it's quite there, I'd rather just not say it, to be honest. In that case, I'd rather wait 'till the thought is ready, 'till I feel like I'm happy with everything.”

“I don't like false happy endings, and I don't think the real world is such a forgiving place.”

“If I could, I'd sing old French songs or American folk music, but I sure as hell can't do it as well as Mississippi John Hurt - no way in hell am I getting near that!”

“There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she's merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness - even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it.”

“By nature, I'm an awkward person; I'm a gangly introvert.”

“It's kind of strange to hear your songs sung back to you! You get a big insight into what people connect to, what's moving to people or what songs people are really into.”

“Growing up in Ireland, there are a lot of aspects of God that hang in the air. And my music reflects that.”

“Being in a studio is quite a creative and energetic process.”