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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Well, I've obviously been a great source of inspiration to the academic population of Salford! They're citing me as a major contribution to their upward trajectory!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.

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

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.

Find a poet whose style you like, emulate that style, then deal with things that you know about - don't waste your time looking for your own style.' I wish I could remember who told me that, because I'd like to congraulate him. I've emulated all the old guys - Tennyson, Alexander Pope.

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

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'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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I'd like to be rich, but without all the downside of fame.

My dad was an electrical engineer.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I love the Arctic Monkeys!

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

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

I've got a speech impediment.