I was always a class clown, so I never had trouble fitting in; I just had trouble finding out where I really wanted to be.
They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit.
I'm a rock climber. I really specialize in doing first ascents, and finding new routes outside, as opposed to doing competitions. I focus my energy on going out into nature and finding these new climbs. For me, it's not just this athletic pursuit - it's a really creative, artistic thing of finding these amazing formations out in nature, and mixing that with this high level of athleticism.
I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them.... I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.
I'd never had any problem finding inspiration; Ireland was always just there, you know? All this richness of culture was there to tap into.
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
I love nothing more than to perform my songs in front of a live audience. And whatever I'm doing is driven toward finding or writing songs and putting out hit songs that drive people coming to see me live. Because, at the end of the day, that's what I enjoy the most.
The reason why I started the clothing line Licious is because I had trouble finding clothes for my body type. I figured if I'm having trouble finding clothes for me, being curvy, I know girls with my body type are probably facing the same issue. And so with the help of my designer, I came up with the idea of creating my own clothing line.
Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.
I remember when I was doing my first Christmas album, I thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice to find new Christmas songs?' Then I went, 'Are you crazy?' When I decorate my tree I don't want new Christmas songs, I want to hear all the familiar songs!
I love the whole aspect of music, especially the singing; I never get tired of finding new songs to sing and sing them in a way that's interesting for the public.
We had terrible trouble finding a Buttercup because she had to be so beautiful. We had all kinds of pretty girls come in, but they weren't this staggering thing.
The problem was, I was labeled as trouble - so I was like, 'Trouble? I'll show you trouble. You want trouble, well here it is!' No matter what label they give you, the best thing you can do is prove them wrong.
That was the trouble with moving houses; no matter how carefully you packed the books, they never ended up on the new shelves in quite the right place.
There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.
Many of my heroes, like Galileo, Maxwell, Newton and, less explicitly, Einstein thought what they were doing was finding out what God is. All of them had this inspiration that if you want to find out what God is, you have to look at his work.