JOHN COOPER CLARKE

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

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

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

I love the Arctic Monkeys!

The '80s were a lost decade.

Me, I listen to all kinds of music, really.

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

I wanted to get rich, like anyone from my background.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

They're very different things, a poem and a song, you wouldn't think they would be, but they are.

Lyrics became important for a while in the late Seventies. Patti Smith was a poet and a rock star, as much one as the other, the distinctions were a bit blurred and then you get swept up in it. Punk poet, it's a good enough term.

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

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

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.

I've been kept from honest employment for a long, long time now. Thank God!

Maybe there are luckier people than me, but I don't know who that would be. I feel pretty lucky. I've had a nice life - I don't know how I could be luckier.

You can always find something better to do than writing when you're at home.

The greatest threat to any artist is surrounding themselves with people who love everything they do.

I enjoy gigging in industrial towns. It seems to be where I go down the best. Somewhere where they have a history of manufacturing, they're my favourite places to play.

I've had a few jobs, but if you want to be a writer, you're better off getting a job that doesn't require that you do anything.