John Cooper Clarke
It took me 30 years for people to consider me an overnight success.
I crack myself up. Even I don't know what I'm going to say next.
I never saw a painting that would not be improved by the addition of tropical fish.
I'm not fond of crowds. I'm no jittery neurotic, but I don't really want to be surrounded by a lot of people if I have a choice.
I was too old to be a punk rocker. I was a mod, that's really the only youth tribe I ever belonged to - and even then, not for very long.
People who believe in God are happier than those who don't.
A much underrated garment, the jegging: they never need ironing and they hold their colour.
Literally' - I'm not having it; people can't go around saying 'literally.' Otherwise, what's literal? There's not another word for literally: if it isn't figurative or metaphorical, what is it? It's literal: there's no substitute.
If you don't like The Ramones, you don't like rock 'n'roll. They're like The Beach Boys without the sea.
It was a tedious saying among hippies: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. I was very much part of the problem.
Idleness - a job that you have to go to, but not necessarily do anything - is the poet's friend.
I've never met a happy atheist.
I don't have secrets, my life's an open book.
When the punk rock thing happened, I thought, 'Right, I have one chance here to be seen as part of some wider social phenomenon.'
Where I grew up, the one unmistakable sign of homosexuality was to betray some interest in your appearance.
I write with pen and paper. I don't have a mobile or computer, because I know how great they are. If I did, I'd never leave the house - you'd find me in six months, dead under a pile of pizza boxes.
Me, I listen to all kinds of music, really.
I love Charles Baudelaire. Him and Shakespeare are the only people I think are better than me.
I had TB as a boy. They said my skeletal frame never developed properly.
The greatest threat to any artist is surrounding themselves with people who love everything they do.
I don't work with anybody I don't like, just for the attention.
I don't go looking for new fads.
The one thing I got right was that I already looked like a punk when punk arrived.
I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.
I quite like cooking, but not to the extent that I look on a kitchen as a domain.
To make the hips the focal point of a pair of trousers is, to me, a fashion mistake.
My trouser needs are simple: a narrow leg in a dark colour, with jean detailing.
To approach a poem as if it is a puzzle to be understood is to miss the point.
I'm dead fussy about food: I don't eat junk.
There are only three things that stop me sleeping: hunger, the odd bad dream and cramp in the arches of my feet - it's crippling, as if somebody's trying to tie your foot in a reef knot.
I'm not one of nature's campers. I'm not even a glamper.
I ain't got a credit card, a mobile phone or a computer. Call me sentimental. I think that's a whole world of trouble I ain't got no business setting foot in. And you know what? It feels good.
Somebody up there likes me. It ain't like I've followed a well trodden trajectory.
Everybody that read one of my poems went off and wrote poetry. They said that about the Velvets, didn't they? They didn't sell many records, but everybody that saw them formed a band.
I judge by appearances. People tell me I shouldn't.
The only casual item I own is a Levi's jacket.
If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.
I love talking about anything, except for myself.
I wish I could drive.
Poets are supposed to be underappreciated, don't you know? There is always a strange reaction to those who become successful in their own lifetime, and so I always felt lucky that I made the living I did out of it.
Where's the mileage in an autobiography? Anyone who writes one inevitably casts themselves as a hero, and I'm not about to do that.
I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?
I would describe my style of dress as careful.
No one wants to be a source of anxiety to everybody they know.
The first time I heard rock'n'roll on a big sound system would have been at a fairground at the seaside. That's a hell of a sensory experience right there.
It's miserable wearing black all the time, unless you're Johnny Cash.
The very pointlessness of a sea walk is it's attractiveness to me.
By the '80s, anything to do with punk was perceived as rancid. Me being known as the 'punk poet' meant my work and I plummeted.
If I'd have known how much fun fatherhood would be, I would have started way earlier than 45.