Hozier

“I'm not quite used to being seen through the eyes of fans yet. Being met with squeals and screams - I haven't gotten used to that.”

“I will play around with an idea for a very long time until it's found it's feet and it's good enough to become a song.”

“The best vocalists I can think of are female.”

“I would love to get in trouble with the Catholic Church. I'm not religious myself, but my issue is with the organization. It's an organization of men - it's not about faith.”

“I'm reading a lot of poetry because it's a lot easier to dip in and dip out when you've got 10 minutes to yourself.”

“I had just discovered jazz, and I started singing in a kind of blues cover band at the age of 15. We called ourselves - it was a terrible name - the Blue Zoots. We couldn't actually get our hands on zoot suits, nor did we dress in blue. We did covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and kind of Blues Brothers repertoire stuff.”

“I love making music, but if you make something that inspires somebody else to make something, without getting too airy-fairy, you've contributed to the zeitgeist in some way, and that's just an amazing feeling.”

“I never wrote music for the mainstream.”

“I try to face things without regret, or make sure that I'm happy with things and leave nothing unsaid if I can.”

“I look at all good things with a bit of a dark lens, I suppose, especially with something like love.”

“I used to almost not look forward to recording, because it was like, 'Okay, what am I going to have to sacrifice?'”

“The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.”

“I tried to avoid anything that caused me frustration or grief or duress. I played FarmVille and procrastinated like all teenagers.”

“I find lyrics can come at any time during the day, as can music.”

“Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance.”

“I'm not cross about the idea of baptism; I just think the idea that when a child is born it is inherently sinful and carries sin and needs to be cleaned in order for it to be all right and all good with its creator, I just think that's an absurd notion.”

“I didn't know what to expect of real America. What shocked me was the diversity of it and how different every city is. But also just how polite and usually good-willed and optimistic most Americans are.”

“Either somebody has equal rights, or they don't. And certainly in the Irish constitution, marriage is genderless. There's no mention of a man and a woman.”

“I feel my duty is to make music.”

“I'm always eager to make new music.”