If you want meaning, you read poetry or a novel or something, you don't read song lyrics. You're supposed to listen to them with music.

I like patterns in words. I'm not really interested in meaning.

Pretty much every artist in Scotland - musician, writer, poet, actor - they're all part of a thing called the National Collective.

I never trust songwriters who talk about what their song is about.

I've made solo records and that's all been a learning experience. I've just got better at singing and more comfortable with who I am and my voice.

I'm quite happy for my voice to be pushed up, whereas in the past I wanted it buried with the guitars, or part of the band, not like I was thinking of myself as 'the singer'.

I suppose if a band is like a gang, it is a moment in time.

I've made a living out of music since I was 19, which is something I'm really happy about.

A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool.

I wonder now if [the gods] take from us that which we love so we must seek them, if only to scavenge for meaning in this existence.

Listening is the art of love and appreciation.

I've liked most of the films that I've been in and those are the kinds of films I like to see.

The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their invisible enemies.

Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.

There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.

Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.