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.

My life at home is super simple. My local bar with my mates, cooking for my mother, making tables, planting vegetables: It's the classic idea of the artistic existence.

Sometimes you give birth to something or you're part of a team that gives birth to an idea, and it grows and has a whole life of its own, and you feel grateful. It's just so humbling.

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.

This weird thing that musicians have... it's got something to do with approval, and not feeling good enough, and therefore going out and being great somehow makes your life valid.

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,...

I pick up my guitar and play. Something might come, and then the pen comes out. Then an edit, until something comes out that you're actually satisfied with.

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.

There are people who can sit down and write a song about any given subject, and they can do it really, really well.

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