Quotes from Ben Howard

The U.K. is pretty good at being environmentally conscious.

It's a privilege to be from England and be able to come over to America and have people listening to music and really enjoying it.

As a musician you're always your own worst critic and you're always digging into your songs and evaluating your own self-worth of things.

I don't really like encouraging people to go on the Internet too much, we're constantly distracted with the Internet and computers.

I think there are definitely positives when you go back to the familiar, because it's something you don't have to think about when you know the place. But sometimes on the other hand, it can be quite unchallenging.

There's force-feeding people synthesised music, then there's a skill in technically being able to play an instrument, even if that is some electronic pad.

In my late teens, I fell out of love with music - you know how kids are, when you're encouraged to do something, you rebel. But then I picked it back up again.

It's the bane of my life and my existence, people telling me to be a little more succinct with what I write.

I'm not prolific, I go over stuff and it goes for me and sometimes against me. I'm annoyed that I don't do enough stuff off-the-cuff. It's a difficult thing to do something quickly and stand behind it.

I guess I'm the sort who, if I find something comfortable, tends to push against it.

I'm terrified of routine.

I can be among the general public and next to me is a big picture of my face, but no one notices apart from my friends.

I think the most frustrating thing is when people... sometimes people are a bit lazy and they don't listen to something, and they'll just say you sound like something else and it's quite clear that you don't, I think that's frustrating.

I went around driving myself to gigs everywhere, and eventually, people just kept coming back.

I meet a lot of people who are awkward around me now. I was always embarrassed about that; the more attention I got, the less I wanted it and the more it would manifest in a physical way and I would be hunched over about it. I'm just starting to realise now that it's not my problem, it's somebody else's problem.

I listen to other people's stuff and, more and more, you realise how much is layered and how many different guitar parts there are.

You realise that people do things differently to each other and, more and more, I realise that there's no right or wrong. You can be a pop star and singing cabaret, and the entertainment of it is your flamboyance, it is your attitude.

I'm not like a total recluse who lives in the woods or anything.

I studied to be a journalist, but I don't think I would have made a very good one. I don't have the work ethic.

Mumford & Sons have really opened up everyone's ears to music with instruments again, acoustic-based music... it's reassuring for people like me who have been brought up on acoustic guitar.

I get really angsty if I've got songs building up and I haven't gotten them recorded.

For me, recording was a lot about honing my guitar skills and honing my singing.

In the countryside, you're always hearing sheep, birds, tractors and farm equipment.

In England, it's usually cold. So surfing is more of an adventure where you're floating around in a big, dark, stormy sea rather than the California notion of girls in bikinis on beaches. It's really going into the fray. I like it because it gives you the extra time and space you need to think.