John Cooper Clarke

I'd like to be rich, but without all the downside of fame.

A much underrated garment, the jegging: they never need ironing and they hold their colour.

My trouser needs are simple: a narrow leg in a dark colour, with jean detailing.

To make the hips the focal point of a pair of trousers is, to me, a fashion mistake.

I hate chickpeas. I like hummus but I ate that before I realised it was made out of chickpeas.

I quite like cooking, but not to the extent that I look on a kitchen as a domain.

When I sit down to eat, the greatest spice of all is hunger.

Dutch food is terrible, I think. What sort of person starts the day with egg and cheese?

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

The one thing I got right was that I already looked like a punk when punk arrived.

When you write poetry you are always addressing the world somehow.

I don't go looking for new fads.

I've got a speech impediment.

To approach a poem as if it is a puzzle to be understood is to miss the point.

I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?

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.

Not everyone is prepared for fame, not even at the level I got it. One minute you're just a face in the crowd, next minute everyone wants a piece of you.

Happiness is the target one only has to aim at in order to miss.

I love talking about anything, except for myself.

I would describe my style of dress as careful.

I had TB as a boy. They said my skeletal frame never developed properly.

If you don't like The Ramones, you don't like rock 'n'roll. They're like The Beach Boys without the sea.

My dad was an electrical engineer.

It took me 30 years for people to consider me an overnight success.

I love Charles Baudelaire. Him and Shakespeare are the only people I think are better than me.

The only casual item I own is a Levi's jacket.

The very pointlessness of a sea walk is it's attractiveness to me.

It's miserable wearing black all the time, unless you're Johnny Cash.

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 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.

No one wants to be a source of anxiety to everybody they know.

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.

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 never saw a painting that would not be improved by the addition of tropical fish.

I wish I could drive.

Where I grew up, the one unmistakable sign of homosexuality was to betray some interest in your appearance.

If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.

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.

I judge by appearances. People tell me I shouldn't.

I've never met a happy atheist.

People who believe in God are happier than those who don't.

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.

Somebody up there likes me. It ain't like I've followed a well trodden trajectory.

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.

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'm not one of nature's campers. I'm not even a glamper.

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 love being on my bike, but I don't consider that a sport: it's too pleasant.

I'm dead fussy about food: I don't eat junk.