Hozier: "We all run the risk of thinking that people have common sense sometimes."

Hozier: "Growing up, I always saw the hypocrisy of the Catholic church. The history speaks for itself, and I grew incredibly frustrated and angry. I essentially just put that into my words."

Hozier: "I never wrote music for the mainstream."

Hozier: "I found the experience of falling in love or being in love was a death: a death of everything. You kind of watch yourself die in a wonderful way, and you experience for the briefest moment - if you see yourself for a moment through their eyes - everything you believed about yourself gone. In a death-and-rebirth sense."

Hozier: "Social media is an advertisement for the superficial extroverted self."

Hozier: "Some of the earlier stuff I did in studio with producers was very pop-directed, which I was uncomfortable with."

Hozier: "I would love to get in trouble with the Catholic Church. I'm not religious myself, but my issue is with the organization. It's an organization of men - it's not about faith."

Hozier: "I think marriage is a scary concept. It's a scary concept for anybody. I'm not sure where I sit with that."

Hozier: "Truth be told, I'm not all that comfortable with celebrity culture. That was always something that baffled me, the obsession over fame. I don't think that's a reason why anyone should get into making music."

Hozier: "I like playing with light and shade. I like saying awful things in very pretty ways."

Hozier: "Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance."

Hozier: "By nature, I'm an awkward person; I'm a gangly introvert."

Hozier: "Much of social media can be seen as the 'News of me.' It's not so much a platform for connecting and sharing as it is a platform for advertising the idea of yourself you want to portray to others: the image of yourself you want to project."

Hozier: "I don't like false happy endings, and I don't think the real world is such a forgiving place."

Hozier: "You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society."

Hozier: "I try to face things without regret, or make sure that I'm happy with things and leave nothing unsaid if I can."

Hozier: "Being 16 is the worst time to be anybody, there is not enough tea in China to persuade me to be that young again. I wasn't very happy with myself."

Hozier: "It's a very, very interesting experience to be talking to people who are such icons in their own right. When Adele came to a show, I was just talking to her, and at the time, I thought, 'I'm just having a chat with somebody.' But then I heard myself say, 'Oh, I was talking to Adele the other day,' and it's as strange as you'd imagine."

Hozier: "No Facebook status is as worrying as a vote and no tweet is as noticeable as an angry cry from a crowd outside a government building."

Hozier: "It's so easy to look forward when you're travelling; you spend your life looking forward, thinking, 'What's next? When do I get time to work on my music again? Or when do I get time to get my 'normal' life back?'"

Hozier: "I hate nightclubs, and I get fed up very quickly in crowded rooms. I enjoy being around people I know."

Hozier: "When you play to an audience, you come away energized. It's the promo that really breaks an artist. Some lad sitting on a box trying to create a drum sound in a dry little studio. Everyone goes, 'Great - okay, now on with my day.' You go back to the bus, and you weep."

Hozier: "I've definitely received a lot of support in Nashville; it's a huge music town. I like country music. Like any genre I'm largely unfamiliar with, there are elements I really enjoy and elements that go over my head."