John Cooper Clarke

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.

Doris Day was the perfect woman.

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.

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

Idleness - a job that you have to go to, but not necessarily do anything - is the poet's friend.

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.

My look was based on the Madison Avenue guy who's just lost his job. Ivy League suit a bit scuzzed up, an outgrown layer cut and five o'clock shadow.

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.

At the beginning, there was no chance I'd get published so I thought I'd give it a go live. I had to perform in rock band places and working men's clubs, where you wouldn't expect to find poetry. I ploughed a lonely furrow.

I've always lived all over the place, and left Manchester the minute I was old enough to steal a car.

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.

You know how the Marvel Comics superheroes formed themselves into the Justice League of America - Batman, Flash and the rest. Why did Superman join? He never needed any help.