My favorite place in the world is L.A. It's my home.

My parents are both from Belfast. I have an Irish passport and a British passport, and I go back every summer and every Christmas, and sometimes I pop over during the year to say hi, and, of course, celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

I'm kind of obsessed with Instagram. I like the fact that you can really express yourself. Obviously, there are limits, but you can always show a lot of your personality and day to day things that no one would ever know.

All my family look Irish. They act Irish. My sister even has red hair... it's crazy. I'm the one that doesn't seem Irish. None of the kids in my family, my siblings, speak with an Irish accent... we've never lived there full-time; we weren't born there. We just go there once or twice a year. It's weird. Our parents sound Irish, but we don't.

To live in Portsmouth without possessing a family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston without having an ancestor in the old Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you cannot be said to flourish.

It can be tough to find areas where Left and Right can agree. Consider the well-being of children: Americans often disagree about how to raise kids, how to educate them, even what to feed them.

I was very lucky to be born into a very academic family. I was well-read, well-trained in mathematics. I had lots of advantages to start with.

There are so many people involved in making an album, and naturally, all you want to do is show it to your friends and family. You just can't do any of that because all it takes is one morsel of information on the Internet. Within seconds, it's around the whole world.