You know Manchester is always a bit of a hard place for people coming from London, just with all the history. Manchester has this immensely huge and healthy history musically.

I liked Germany; I'm not into Berlin, it's too huge and empty and imposing, but Munich was good.

It's mostly Mars Bars and peanuts and cheese and you go to the fridge and there's Red Bull and Beer. It's not like people are holding me down and pouring beer in my face.

When Blur first started and we were playing Manchester the Hacienda was the place to go. That was where a lot of exciting stuff was happening and London was pretty dead.

There are a lot of people who can do it on the guitar and sing at the same time, but I think what is harder is bass players that can play the bass and sing.

I suppose my little Martin acoustic guitar is quickly becoming a prize possession. It's a lovely guitar. I bought it at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2001 before I had cleaned up.

My hobby is my job. it's a jobby!

I think it's better if blokes can admit that they can have crushes on other blokes. I've probably had crushes but never really sexual crushes on men.

Most of America don't even listen to music probably. They just go raccoon hunting or something.

I think a lot of cynicism has dropped away from my shoulders since I stopped drinking.

I've always looked at shoes as being immensely beautiful things.

Tears do not replace sweat, at least it never did in me... When I just cry, I'm in the same situation.

And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.

Talent is the presence of ability and absence of understanding about the source and operation of knowledge.

The universe was playing with loaded dice, which insured an excess of cowards in our ranks.

People permit life to slide past them like a deft pickpocket, their purse-not yet missed and now too late-in his hand.

Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint, Each lost day has its patron saint!

I'm a good man with a good heart had a tough time, got a rough start But I finally learned to let it go.

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

However, a rich print environment helps only when more reading is done.

God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts.