ALEX KAPRANOS

Of course, there's a certain type of person who feels that anything which becomes mainstream has to be rejected immediately. And that's part of the indie-alternative snobbery and hierarchy and elitism.

Just because you can leap off a drum kit doing a scissors kick while hitting a chord, people expect you to be an extrovert socially. But I'm not always comfortable with the idea of small talk at a party.

The internet is like a gossipy girls' locker room after school, isn't it?

There's a difference between expectations and aspirations.

Maybe 'Can't Stop Feeling' and 'Turn It On' we'll just release as singles. It's a thing The Beatles used to do which I really loved, the idea of releasing something as a single completely on its own.

Why play a chord when you can play one note?

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

No matter what you do, if you're trying to create something new, your environment has a massive impact on you.

A lot of bands have the enthusiasm kicked out of them by playing really dreary pub venues that just churn bands through.

There's a character that I play onstage, and I can't let him loose in the supermarket when I'm buying my beans on toast.

If success had come along when I was 17 it would either have killed me or sent me completely mad.

I really want it to have an impact on the world. I want to be in a town on the other side of the world, and somebody walks up and says, 'That music you made in Glasgow, I listened to it every day, and it moved me.'

I didn't grasp the basic principle of being a promoter, which was: Put on music but also generate an income. I was on the dole most of the time.

If I was a fan of someone as a teenager, then it's OK for me to feel completely in awe when I meet them.

Ambition is sneered at by some bands. It seems like a pretty good thing to me.

Boho to me is a first-year student who's just discovered the tie-dye shop.

Ideally, musicians belong outside the Establishment. When they cross that line, it's like something in them has died.

Boredom or being sick of what you've done before is a big part of being in a band.

People's musical tastes are fickle, and music can be a fashion.

Traditionally, lots of vagrants and unemployable characters wind up working in kitchens.

I think a lot of bands are creatively knackered when they come off tour.

Cinema, which is influenced by every single part of life, is direct and reaches you immediately. And writing - the best writing is complex ideas communicated concisely. And music - if it's a good tune, make sure people can bloody hear it.

A lot of food criticism has a similar flavor to it, and I'm probably going to write about it in a different way.

Men behave very oddly in the company of attractive women.

It's easy to be lazy when there's food lying around backstage or there's a fast-food joint a couple blocks away. But if you walk a little further, ask around a bit, of course there are exciting things to discover.