Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Elvis ate America before America ate him.
You only know you love her when you let her go.
Only know you've been high when you're feeling low.
You see all I need is a whisper in a world that only shouts.
Life's for the living, so live it, or you're better off dead.
I dropped out of college and started gigging around Brighton.
Busking is the essence of what I do. It's made everything possible.
If you can't be what you want, you learn to be the thing's you're not
Some people expect me to have changed overnight because of one big song.
You have to play to your strengths, and my strength is the amount of content I create.
I love that - you get everything from seven-year-olds to 87-year-olds at Passenger gigs.
I write wherever I am. It helps that the writing process, for me, is a lone-wolf mission.
I have spent a lot of time out in Australia, and so I have a good little fan base out there.
My dad's from New Jersey, so I used to go to America a lot. I feel like it is a second home.
Well you only need the light when it's burning low, only miss the sun when it starts to snow.
I can headline a festival and then literally, 10 minutes later, be walking around, and nobody notices.
I spent my life on the road touring, and a lot of the songs are written in tour buses and hotel rooms.
Its pretty humbling, because I go back to the places where I used to play for 13 people, and now there's 1,500.
I don't think I've ever really fitted into the industry and the scene. I feel like I've always been on the cusp.
I write so much and I release so much music that I think I'm less precious about that stuff than a lot of people.
I'm lucky in the sense that I can write wherever I am - on the bus, in the hotel room, backstage, sitting at home.
I'm so lucky to not have to busk anymore, but I realized as soon as I didn't need to do it that I really missed it.
I can find myself in a situation where, by the time I'm releasing an album, I have the next one written. It is a bit old school.
I know Ed Sheeran writes with a bunch of fantastic writers, but for me, it's quite difficult to be that honest with other people.
Some songs take months to get right, but 'Let Her Go' was so easy. I was no more pleased with it than any other song I'd written.
'Heart on Fire' didn't do as well as the last record in most territories, but South Africa is one of the places it did really well.
I think you've got to be careful with social media. You can get addicted to the buzz of people liking and commenting. It's exhausting.
Busking taught me so much on so many levels, not just about being a musician or writing songs - actually about growing up and being a human!
'Hell Or High Water' was written after the end of a relationship, and I do feel like every Passenger album has the obligatory break-up song.
I think you're in trouble if you start chasing what you've done in the past. You always need to move on and look forward and do something new.
I'd say 99 per cent of the time I write on my own, just with my guitar, and then it's trying to figure out what it needs in a production sense.
I'd get a train to some town and wander about to find a decent spot. Sometimes I'd play for three hours; sometimes I'd get moved on after three songs.
I think some sing-songwriter music can just be very serious - after an hour and a half of it, you are exhausted - so I try and give it light and shade.
If you go back to early folk, it's all storytelling; that's exactly what it is: some guy telling a story in a pub to 50 people with a guitar, you know.
What I love is when I play gigs, it's just me and a guitar - very simple, very direct and intimate, and you hear every lyric, and you hear every detail.
I think expectations are sometimes dangerous things. I think the only thing you can be sure of is that it won't go to plan. I think that's the only thing that's definite.
I think, and I don't know if it's because of 'Searching for Sugar Man,' but South Africans seem to not have to go with what's popular but what they like, and that's refreshing.
I dropped out of school at 17 'cause all I wanted to do was play music. I had odd jobs on the side of gigging until I turned 22, when I was lucky to start doing this full time.
I learned classical guitar as a kid at about 7 or 8 years old. When I was about 14, I started dabbling in songwriting. That's when I got into the folky singer-songwriter style.
I think I just look extremely normal, like just a sort of fairly trendy bearded bloke. Whereas Ed, you'd know it's Ed Sheeran from space, you know; you can see him from anywhere.
If you can write a catchy melody and a song that captures people around the world, what better thing to do? Other than 'Let Her Go,' I haven't managed to do that. And that's fine by me.
The big thing is I'm not with a major label. I've been independent since the get-go, and I've been very lucky to get some good advice on keeping hold of copyright and that kind of stuff.
I think we're all survivors, to be honest. I mean, some of us more than others - some of us have to survive far more horrendous things than others. It's all relative: whatever your experience is.
I think whenever I've thought something might go well, it hasn't, and when I've thought, 'Oh yeah, just chuck it out there,' that's when it kicks off, so now, I don't claim to understand anything.
I believe it's important to put all of your energy into what you're doing rather than doing an office job and trying to muster up energy for music. It's been a real blessing to play music full time.
I've got friends and my family and people who've been around for years and years and years. And those people are never in doubt: They'd be my friend whether I was a homeless dude, or I had a hit single.
I can play the main stage at the Newport Folk Festival in front of 10,000 people and do all the gigs and stuff I want to do. Then I can go home and get toilet paper on a Sunday morning and not get hassled.
I've spent the last 10 years constantly touring and haven't had much reason to stick around anywhere. I'm 34 now, and I've got a girlfriend and a house and two cats. I don't want to run away; I like where I'm at.
Every time you go in to make a record with the same group of musicians, the communication gets better and better. You've got that joint experience, and you learn with every single one that you have on top of that.
Sometimes supporting is difficult because a lot of people go to a gig to see the main act and to have a beer and a chat with their mates, so a lot of the time, even if you were John Lennon, would not listen to you.