Sheeran: "The more you write tunes, the better they will become. The more you do gigs, the better you will become. It’s just kind of like the facts of life; the practice makes perfect thing. Keep your fingers crossed, start from the bottom and work your way up."

Sheeran: "I really don't know what's good or bad art because all the art I like people tell me is tasteless."

Sheeran: "I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them."

Sheeran: “I think the music I’ve created is quite odd, and people are going to start talking about that.”

Sheeran: "I think I need to accept the fact that I am where I am today because fans have shared my music illegally and legally, but I wouldn't be here today without the Internet, so I can't speak out against it."

Sheeran: “Be nice to everyone, always smile and appreciate things because it could all be gone tomorrow.”

Sheeran: "I think to be successful at anything you have to put in a hell of a lot of effort. Pick your battles. I picked music, put in a lot of effort, and it's worked."

Sheeran: “There’s lots of ways of writing songs – riffs that spark an idea, a particular line or lyric you hear... I also find that you need to just be in a constant flow of writing songs, so, just like training a muscle, I am always pretty much writing. It’s my daily practice if you like. I mean, until this year I never really lost my voice, because since I was a teenager I’ve been singing every single day.”

Sheeran: "As far as songwriting, my inspirations came from love, life and death, and viewing other people's situations."

Sheeran: "[Being a pop star] doesn't last. ... It's do your time, earn your money, buy some property and when it all goes to shit you've got something to fall back on."

Sheeran: “I’m quite arty. I didn’t know whether to become an artist or musician but I realized I could paint with music. All my songs have colours.”

Sheeran: “In 2012 it was Emeli Sandé. In 2013 it was Lorde. In 2014 it was Sam, 2015 it was James Bay, 2016 it was... I want to say Rag’n’Bone Man. 2017 it was Stormzy, 2018 it was probably Billie, 2019 was Lewis and 2020 it was Olivia. Every year there’s a new person who is the biggest thing and me, being someone who has released a lot, you know, you are no longer exciting. So you have to find ways to make people more excited by you.”

Sheeran: "I'm kind of heads down and get things done."

Sheeran: "Music is a powerful tool in galvanizing people around an issue. There's no better way to get your point across than to put it in a beautiful song."

Sheeran: "I've had years of teasing about my red hair, but I definitely think it toughened me up. If you're ginger, you end up pretty quick-witted."

Sheeran: "I find the whole concept of women screaming at me so odd. It's very flattering, but I don't think I will ever consider myself to be a sex symbol."

Sheeran: "Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird."

Sheeran: "I don't kind of want to be known as a one-trick pony who just does the adult-alternative song once a year that makes it onto the radio and people sort of think it's nice."

Sheeran: "I think I've been around for a while. But I still have to pay my dues."

Sheeran: "I was on some TV shows with Lady Gaga the other week, and you could see the difference in reaction between her fans and my fans outside. She comes out, and she looks like a star, and the reaction is just tears, crying, people going, 'Oh my God, Oh my God.' My fans are like: 'Alright, Ed.'"

Sheeran: "If Adele's seen as boring, then I'm happy to be boring as well."

Sheeran: "A sense of humor is an important thing to have because when you get into an argument, one of the best ways to diffuse it is to be funny."

Sheeran: “The main thing that you have to remember on this journey is, just be nice to everyone and always smile.”

Sheeran: "The main idea of it was to multiply everything, to have a bigger sound and grow venue size and grow fan base. As for a lyrical theme of the album [named "X"], it's just diary entries; it's just kind of like three years of my life in songs."

Sheeran: "You kind of half-prepare a speech in your head, and then you get up there and then you end up saying nothing that was in your head before you went up there. It's a very weird thing. I never do award speeches too well."

Sheeran: "I've done some really weird gigs. The ones where no one turned up - they're probably not the interesting ones to talk about. I played some pretty random ones in L.A. I signed to play all-R&B nights or an all-comedy night where I'd be the only white person there. They were fun."

Sheeran: "I kind of like the way that I came up as an artist."

Sheeran: "I'm always doing something before I'm going to them. For instance, I was doing a show the night before this one. I never really think about it too much because it's always in the middle of a lot of things."

Sheeran: "I used to get drunk in venues after my shows and sign the walls 'Ed was here.' So if you see that, it was me."

Sheeran: “I’ve written around 230 songs over the past few years, hundreds and hundreds, and only now am I at the stage where all that hard work is being released into the world again. I finished = in January and I’ve been tweaking and fine-tuning it since then; production bits and bobs. I’m actually going to master the record today.”

Sheeran: "Everyone knows almost everything about me. I make it very clear that I'm cool with people knowing all my personal life through my songs."

Sheeran: "'Look, all things considered, you and I both know people that are more talented than us, but you know what they say about 10,000 hours? How many guys do you know that have put in 30,000?"

Sheeran: "I saw myself as technically being unemployed during that period of noncreation and, to be honest, I was f*cking miserable."

Sheeran: "It was my love for the guitar that first got me into music and singing."

Sheeran: "I've never dated anyone in Hollywood - or anyone famous, for that matter. I don't know that I'm ever gonna write a song that you will know who it's about."

Sheeran: “I’m not afraid of hard work.”

Sheeran: "You can't call me a Twitter phenomenon or a YouTube one. These things are useful, but so's hard gigging. One year I did 311 shows. I did six in one night alone."

Sheeran: "Try to find someone with a sense of humor. That's an important thing to have because when you get into an argument, one of the best ways to diffuse it is to be funny. You don't want to hide away from a point, because some points are serious, but you'd rather have a discussion that was a discussion, rather than an argument."

Sheeran: "Some of my tattoos are a bit silly, but I know where and what time I got them."

[On if he were to pass Taylor Swift in sales]

Sheeran: "I think it would take a lot more work because she’s obviously been going about 10 years more than me. If I passed her, I think she’d then get more competitive and do more stuff. I think it would only be healthy. Like her surpassing me in sales in the U.S., that’s healthy for me because I now want to get up to that point."

Sheeran: "Be original; don't be scared of being bold!"

Sheeran: "I've never really been a confident person, except from a musical standpoint. I had to push myself early on, but it got easier with each gig."

Sheeran: "I don't think that there's much that sets me apart from other musicians, but I think there are definitely things that set me apart from other kinds of artists. I feel that musicians do it their own way, write their own songs and put on a great live shows."

Sheeran: "I want to have a career that evolves as I go on."

Sheeran: “I walked off the stage in Ipswich, aged 28, and I thought that was it. That was the top of the mountain and, you know, I’d never do that again. I thought it would be all downhill from here. The end of that tour hit me very hard. I went home, finally, decided to take some time away from my music; it had become this monster. I needed to find a different energy. I started painting and then the pandemic hit.”

Sheeran: "I do like my hair. It took a while to come around to the fact that it was quite a unique value point."

Sheeran: "I saw Damien Rice in Dublin when I was 13, and that inspired me to want to pursue being a songwriter... I practised relentlessly and started recording my own EPs. At 16, I moved to London and played any gigs I could, selling CDs from my rucksack to fund recording the next, and it snowballed from there."

Sheeran: "The whole 'studly womaniser' thing, I mean, I quite enjoy the title - it's just not very accurate."

Sheeran: "But once you've made a song and you put it out there, you don't own it anymore. The public own it. It's their song. It might be their song that they wake up to, or their song they have a shower to, or their song that they drive home to or their song they cry to, scream to, have babies to, have weddings to - like, it isn't your song anymore."

Sheeran: "I've always had really messy hair."

Sheeran: "I think encouraging young people to twerk might be a bad thing. It's a stripper's move. If I had a daughter of nine, I wouldn't want her twerking."

Sheeran: "I think if you have someone without a sense of humor, you're less likely to be together."

Sheeran: "I would say, you can never do enough gigs and you can never do enough songs. Make sure that every opportunity you can, play a show and every opportunity you can, write a song."

Sheeran: "Never be friends with your exes if you weren't friends with them before."

Sheeran: "Nashville is wicked. It's like a proper music community, but it's also quintessentially American. You bump into people there with cowboy hats that spit in jars and call you 'boy.' I just love that."

Sheeran: "I've always said Shape Of You is going to be the biggest now, but Castle On The Hill is going to be the biggest in 20 years."

Ryan Tedder: "Ed is super-intelligent and he's savvier than just about anyone I've ever met."

The Scotsman: And the Halifax-born Ed Sheeran, who had huge charts hits with The A Team, You Need Me, I Don’t Need You and Lego House is not afraid to say that he’s hugely ambitious. “I’m not afraid of hard work,” he says. “I dream of Coldplay-sized fame. Their music has grown to fill the venues they’re playing - from rooms to arenas to stadiums, and that’s where I want to be one day.