When you start hiding things away, that’s when the darkness creeps up. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I grew up in a very small, rural country town, and we didn't really have 'the arts.'

Three-quarters of my family is Irish. Of course, the Kazee is not.

The thing is that I'm an actor first, and in 'Once,' I was able to be a musician and a singer as well as an actor.

We go see theater, we take in art because it makes us feel.

I never really trained to be a musician, but I've been playing guitar since I was around, like, 13 years old. For me, the guitar has always been the instrument that I've played. I play a little piano. I taught myself everything by ear. I don't read music at all, which has not really been a hindrance.

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

For me, music is sort of my passion, more so than being an actor. I just never tried to make a career as a musician. It was just something that I did on my own time, just for me. I had written a lot of songs, but I don't really record a lot of music because, for me, it's the same way as a poet: I write to get things out. It's sort of cathartic.

Social media is its own sort of thing: Twitter and Facebook have changed the way everyone perceives everything.