Happiness is the target one only has to aim at in order to miss.
— John Cooper Clarke
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.
If you want to know why the coast is such an inspirational place, ask Herman Melville, Jack London, Nordhoff and Hall, Robert Louis Stevenson or Joseph Conrad. It's a glimpse of eternity. It invites rumination, the relentless whisper of the tide against the shore.
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.
I'm a great believer in the capsule wardrobe - a wardrobe where's there's a limited palate of black colours.
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 had TB as a boy. They said my skeletal frame never developed properly.
I love talking about anything, except for myself.
The only casual item I own is a Levi's jacket.
I've never met a happy atheist.
Somebody up there likes me. It ain't like I've followed a well trodden trajectory.
I'm not one of nature's campers. I'm not even a glamper.
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.
A much underrated garment, the jegging: they never need ironing and they hold their colour.
I hate chickpeas. I like hummus but I ate that before I realised it was made out of chickpeas.
Dutch food is terrible, I think. What sort of person starts the day with egg and cheese?
When you write poetry you are always addressing the world somehow.
If I'd have known how much fun fatherhood would be, I would have started way earlier than 45.
I went to what can only be described as a slum school in Salford - rough and full of trainee punks - but I was very lucky in that I had one inspiring teacher, John Malone, who gave the whole class an interest in romantic poetry.
It's miserable wearing black all the time, unless you're Johnny Cash.
No one wants to be a source of anxiety to everybody they know.
If you don't like The Ramones, you don't like rock 'n'roll. They're like The Beach Boys without the sea.
It took me 30 years for people to consider me an overnight success.
I never saw a painting that would not be improved by the addition of tropical fish.
Where I grew up, the one unmistakable sign of homosexuality was to betray some interest in your appearance.
I judge by appearances. People tell me I shouldn't.
People who believe in God are happier than those who don't.
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.
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 dead fussy about food: I don't eat junk.
My trouser needs are simple: a narrow leg in a dark colour, with jean detailing.
I quite like cooking, but not to the extent that I look on a kitchen as a domain.
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 don't go looking for new fads.
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.
The very pointlessness of a sea walk is it's attractiveness to me.
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.
I would describe my style of dress as careful.
I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?
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.
I wish I could drive.
If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.
I love Charles Baudelaire. Him and Shakespeare are the only people I think are better than me.
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 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.
I love being on my bike, but I don't consider that a sport: it's too pleasant.
To approach a poem as if it is a puzzle to be understood is to miss the point.
To make the hips the focal point of a pair of trousers is, to me, a fashion mistake.
When I sit down to eat, the greatest spice of all is hunger.
The one thing I got right was that I already looked like a punk when punk arrived.
