James Vincent McMorrow

“Food in Dublin has gotten immeasurably better than it was. When I was a kid, there weren't a lot of options. Now you're overwhelmed with options.”

“I'm very ambitious, musically - I want to create great things, not mediocre work.”

“The only thing that's ever made sense to me has been sitting in the house by myself making music.”

“I never was the front man in any bands I played in when I was in college, and I always learned music by myself at home.”

“I like what I like, I don't like what I don't like, and I'm very bad at toning myself down.”

“You play a couple of shows, and these label guys come - and they leave halfway through a show. Then the phone calls just stop. And your heart is broken.”

“With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.”

“I was never a 'sit down with a notepad and write lyrics' kind of person.”

“I remember always looking forward to listening to country music in the car with my mother, and it wasn't even something I enjoyed in the sense of music, but just being around music itself was enough.”

“All the really good guitar players - Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or even Bert Jansch or John Martin - I love all those people. But I didn't start out thinking that I would be a guitar player. In the beginning, I played the guitar so I could sing. I mainly concentrated on my voice.”

“I have some vivid memories of walking around as a child with a cassette tape.”

“I don't know if I'm attention deficit, but I certainly am easily distracted by other things.”

“I just essentially stayed at home for three years and just learned to play as many instruments as I could and listened to as many singers as I could. Like, when I got to about 19/20, I started listening to singers. I normally just listened to bands. Now I listen to a lot of old singers, not a lot of new stuff.”

“I'm learning on the guitar all the time.”

“I didn't start playing music really until I was 18/19, so it was a relatively new thing. I didn't play much music in school.”

“You just wake up and make music.”

“You get one chance to make an impression, and coasting through is a disservice.”

“It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do.”