Glen Hansard Quotes
A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life.
Our imagination it is our greatest ally . . . Imagination is a very, very powerful thing. It literally invents the path before you.
If you don't mark your successes, the day your ship comes in could be just another day at the office, and there's no poetry in that.
The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.
Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.
I choose to believe that there is good in people and that everything is a lesson. Our place on Earth is to go deeper, to somehow get wiser. To have spirit.
Our imagination just needs space. It's all it needs, that moment where you just sort of stare into the distance where your brain gets to sort of somehow rise up.
I've realized, you know, having turned 40, that rest is just as important as work. In fact, it's equally as important.
I only ever really take out my guitar when I'm miserable, which isn't necessarily a very good time to do it.
There are people who can sit down and write a song about any given subject, and they can do it really, really well.
My dad was quiet, angry, shut down. So my thing is: I express everything that's there. I want to get it all out.
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.
I've always loved playing solo. I guess in a way I just feel blessed to be able to make music. My favorite thing is usually whatever I'm doing right there and then.
Relationships can be about yourself, they can be about you and your god, you and your people, you and your family. It can be about a lot of different stuff. And it is.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes travelling really intensely for a long time is like having a continuous nervous breakdown.
I'm not an actor, and I'll never call myself an actor. I've never thought of it as part of my life. I'll always be a singer, in my eyes.
Keeping the pen out of your hand as much as possible is the best way to write a song, in my estimation. But the pen must come in to tighten it up.
You know, albums are a funny thing. They're not like an intellectual decision. It's a collection of your kind of musings.
