I take cabs if I need to get somewhere or I take car service. I don't drive, I wouldn't mind riding a bike... People think that because you become an entertainer you gotta have this rock star thug image. I'm an artist, man. I'm going to live like an artist.
Being a singer now I have to get all fussy... I must have my ginger and lemon and all that.
You never get tired of the buzz of touring.
I've seen too many people who have been artists for a long time, on that cycle of record-promote-tour, and you look up and 10 years of your life is gone. I didn't want that to happen to me.
New York is a brutally expensive place to live, and the kind of person who might have the dedication and esoteric taste to make the comics that I would really love is finding it more relaxing to live elsewhere.
My father was a songwriter and he had a studio, and I was always surrounded by musicians and people creating music. I think I just always believed that that was a normal job, and people waking up at lunchtime and working until late at night, that to me always just was quite a normal job.
I don't tell 'U.S. Weekly' which parties I'm going to. I write songs.
You don't write on tour; it takes all your concentrating to make the gig - that's survival technique. Afterwards, you run around town to find interesting hipsters and go to all the interesting spots. You got to go to every hotspot until everything has closed down.
I don't have any desire to go back into the studio, and I certainly don't have any desire to go back on the road.
I think both of my parents are unique in the way they don't live their lives as celebrities. They're both artists, first and foremost. My mom lives a very private life. So does my father. You don't really see them in the tabloids or anything like that. I think that's definitely a decision you can make.
Being a musician and artist can feel superficial at times - you talk about yourself every day and pose for photos for the magazines and newspapers, and it can be very tiring for your well-being.
When I hit my 20s, I took a chill pill and relaxed because throughout my teens I was churning out an album a year. It was a treadmill of work then recording, promoting and touring.
I absolutely love Ireland. It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and I have strong ties here. Both my grandmothers are from Ireland, and I have spent every summer in Bantry since my father, who is an artist, had the romantic idea 20 years ago to buy an old farmhouse on the west coast and renovate it.
With my friends in Brooklyn, many of them started out as artists. I saw many of these friends move into late middle age, still struggling without health insurance or a cushion. I saw people who had given up being artists. Being an artist necessitates a compromise or living on the edge.
When you have an engagement, at least in my world, the world that I create for myself, an engagement doesn't begin when you hit the stage and end when you leave the stage. It begins when you hit the city limits, and it ends when you leave the city limits.
My parents are artists and they decided they would prefer to paint in the Mediterranean rather than in Scotland.
Flying private is cool, but the tour bus is like a home that you can decorate.
There would be weeks when I'd just go to Paris on a cheap ticket, sleep on my friend's floor, and just do a show because I knew I was going to do a show. Do it, get home, see it on my timeline, and be happy that I was just working.
You can have a wife - you can have a child or children - and be a rock n' roller.
I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.
I fly to London or the U.S. to record my music nearly once a month.
A lot of people have a misconception about artists, that they're invincible, you know, they're on a different plateau. But I'm just a human being.
I hate the whole 'record your album, do your promo campaign, have a year off to write another album' pattern. As an artist, you should keep creating as much as you possibly can.
There's a huge difference between who I am when I make music and who I am the rest of the time.
The music business, and the travel that comes with it, is stressful, challenging, redundant, exhausting, exciting, and often very depressing.
