John Cooper Clarke Quotes

My declining allure is a source of great sadness to me.

With charm you’ve got to get up close to see it; style slaps you in the face.

It amazes me there are movies about writers… such inert, uneventful lives.

When the punk rock thing happened, I thought, ‘Right, I have one chance here to be seen as part of some wider social phenomenon.’

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

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

Fame just ain’t a natural situation. But I shouldn’t have worried because everyone thought I was a bit famous even before I’d done anything; people just assumed I was famous.

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

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 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.

I don’t have secrets, my life’s an open book.

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.

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

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

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

I got to play The Vortex in London with the Buzzcocks, the Fall, me and Johnny Thunders And The Heartbreakers. That was a serious Manchester night.

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

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

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

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

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

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’ve never met a happy atheist.

When you’re doing poetry like mine that rhymes, it’s very easy to sound like a song that didn’t work out!

Doris Day was the perfect woman.

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

To convey one’s mood
in seventeen syllables
is very diffic

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 love singing. I’m a great singer.

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.

As they used to say on Stingray, ‘Anything can happen in the next half hour’. I’ve always tried to live with that thought in mind.

There is a certain sentimental vibe in my home town of Manchester, which you would sort of expect.

I’m not much of a team player when it comes to making records, I’ve got to say.

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

All the best musicians started out in church; Jesus invented rock ‘n’ roll.

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

I don’t work with anybody I don’t like, just for the attention.

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 main thing a poem ought to be is musical. It should be rhythmic. You should hear it as a musical piece in your head as you’re writing it.

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

The ’80s were a lost decade.

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

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

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

I eat like a pig. Tripe is the only thing I won’t eat.

I’m not giving away sartorial secrets but the trousers I wear cost 19 quid.

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.

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.

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

If I’d have known how much fun fatherhood would be, I would have started way earlier than 45.

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.

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.

My favourite writers are columnists.

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

I crack myself up. Even I don’t know what I’m going to say next.

Too many memoirs focus on childhoods and it’s a bit turgid.

I’m a great reader of credits; I never leave the cinema before they finish.

I’ve got a speech impediment.

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

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

From social pariah to King of the World? It’s taken 45 years, so I’ve been able to adjust to it!

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.

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 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.

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

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

There’ve been lots of positive changes in the city since I worked at Salford Tech in the seventies, and I’m pleased to be known as Salford’s Bard and to have helped put it on the map.

Being unapologetic means never having to say you’re sorry.

Most cities are the same.

I would describe my style of dress as careful.

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 love the Arctic Monkeys!

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

I love talking about anything, except for myself.

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

My dad was an electrical engineer.

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

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

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