I definitely asked too many questions of my teachers and was probably a bit facetious at times.

The moment you have children, it's like your heart gets out of your body, puts on clothes, and walks away.

I actually do bits of my writing in sort of incidental spaces - when I'm traveling on the Tube or on a bus. More often than not, it's a reaction to how you feel about something, and if you're sitting down and concentrating on, 'I must write something,' then you can't have a truthful reaction.

I had a series of jobs in the small fishing village in West Wales where my family lived when I was a teenager. I worked as a fisherman in the day, and then the skipper and his wife ran a small restaurant - she'd cook the fish he caught.

It's great being an actor and being part of a play or a film where there's usually quite a big group of people who are collaborating, and your job is really to fit in and share that energy. With music, because I write the songs, it's a broader, more abstract process.

I'm married to the girl that I first went out with when I was 16. We were on and off for years; now we're married with a kid, so I don't have that many exes.

Our job as actors is to invent the things that bridge ourselves with the characters, so you have to build something if it's not there - you try and learn what makes people behave in a certain way.

I think everyone in their 30s looks back at their 20s and thinks, 'Oh God, if I'd just done this and this, and not done that.'

In my early twenties, the whole experience of going on tour was like losing myself in this slightly wild environment.

I take them both seriously - I don't particularly want to be an 'actor-musician.' I want to play the great challenging parts, to be right for the part, rather than just, 'Oh, he can play the fiddle.'

Weirdly, my dad didn't want me to become an actor, he was always quite resistant to it. He told me as much many times. That just made it more attractive to me.

The reason I stopped music for a while and concentrated on theatre was that it was more conducive to parenting; having the days free was quite handy. I love them both. I hope I don't have to compromise one for the other.

The thing I find really special in performance is that there is this slightly mystical thing that takes over when you're responding to a crowd and engaging in people's imaginations collectively in a room. I've always thought that one of the most incredible things about being alive is going to see some kind of performance like that.

We all have these shades in our nature: it's a spectrum within all of us.

I didn't think about having kids until like I was 48, 49 years old.

John Shanks is probably the biggest workaholic I've ever met in my life.

Don't be afraid to play what you feel and what you think no matter what it is. If you play long enough, you start to move past your influences and find your own music.

I'm lucky I actually make a living making music.

I'm one of these guys who always feel like the outsider, you know? I'm always longing to be part of something, you know?

We had always put ballads on all of our albums.

I love playing the songs that people love because it makes them happy.

I'm a songwriter.

A live show is something that can never ever be duplicated on a computer.

I really love Death Cab.