British politics, as the world knows, is a joke. Yet it's rarely funny.

The solo years have been more meaningful to the audiences than the Smiths years, but the press in England only write about me in relation to the Smiths era.

As a very small child I found recorded noise and the solitary singer beneath the spotlight so dramatic and so brave... walking the plank... willingly... It was sink or swim. The very notion of standing there, alone, I found beautiful.

You have to, at least from a distance, look as if you know what you're doing, and I can manage that.

You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies.

If you love animals, obviously it doesn't make sense to hurt them.

I find that it isn't wise to attempt to judge people on their public persona, and even on the music they make. Because I've met so many people whose music I cannot stand, and they're very nice. At the same time, I've met people whose music I've loved, and they're not the person you've invested all this emotion in.

Obviously Madonna reinforces everything absurd and offensive.

The paradox is that I have no love for myself as a human being, but I have immense pride in the music I make, and I believe it has an important place. Others do, too, and the thousands of people with Morrissey tattoos certainly proves something.

I have no love for myself as a human being, but I have immense pride in the music I make.

I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.

I hated the royal wedding.

I feel undefinable actually.

I don't necessarily think that the world should know everything, and even if you consider yourself to be extremely honest, that doesn't mean you have to blurt everything out all the time.

I don't iron anything. Never have and never will.

Smiths songs certainly have an astonishing afterlife.

When I'm lying in my bed I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me.

What's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning? Wish I hadn't.

Age shouldn't affect you. It's just like the size of your shoes - they don't determine how you live your life! You're either marvellous or you're boring, regardless of your age.

The monarchy is foremost a business, and it's important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless 'royal' family. I find it very sad.

I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong.

Life's full of tricky snakes and ladders.

No British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher.

I do think it's possible to go through life and never fall in love, or find someone who loves you.

We're all lonely, but I'd rather be lonely by myself than with a long list of duties and obligations. I think that's why people kill themselves, really.

Whether it be Beyonce or Justin Bieber, we see singers who have absolutely nothing to offer anyone as they walk off stage clutching three Grammys in each hand.

Long hair is an unpardonable offence which should be punishable by death.

Each year of life brings us nearer to our decline, but I will continue to seek a listener until I'm dead in a ditch.

Racism is beyond common sense and has no place in our society.

Peru, Peru. My heart's lighthouse.

Reggae is vile.

The Royal family to me are not England, and they are not the flag.

Artists aren't really people. I'm actually 40 per cent papier mache.

All of us, ultimately, we're not that interesting, when it comes down to it.

My talents do not lie in DIY.

I've never intended to be controversial, but it's very easy to be controversial in pop music because nobody ever is.

I'm cursed with the gift of foresight.

The fire in the belly is essential, otherwise you become Michael Buble - famous and meaningless.

The rhino is now more or less extinct, and it's not because of global warming or shrinking habitats. It's because of Beyonce's handbags.

I think the pop chart today is entirely market-driven. And it has nothing to do with public taste. And it has nothing to do with moving music forward. It's simply a market chart.

The Smiths was an incredibly personal thing to me. It was like launching your own diary to music.

Once somebody is known, it seems as though anybody anywhere can say anything about them. Whereas if I simply stopped someone in the street and criticised their clothes, their work, their parents, their inner being, I'd be sued and I'd be thrown in prison.

My parents were worried about me, certainly when I became so deeply interested in music and people like the New York Dolls who, at the time, were very peculiar indeed.

I think we were all initially swept along with the Obama win, but he's proven to be simply a set of teeth, and useless in every other regard.

I don't want to get too involved in marketing budgets, online promotions and download set-ups because it would be a bit like Gertrude Stein mapping out a TV campaign. I want to sing. I want visibility. I am essentially Al Martino, not Seymour Stein.

The word 'indie' is meaningless now. It's so over-used that people think it simply means green hair.

Lady Gaga said to me, 'You showed me how it's done.' I have no idea what she meant by 'it.'

Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher's name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it.

If anyone has seen the horrific and unwatchable footage of the Chinese cat and dog trade - animals skinned alive - then they could not possibly argue in favour of China as a caring nation. There are no animal protection laws in China and this results in the worst animal abuse and cruelty on the planet. It is indefensible.

I think I'd be a prime candidate for canonisation.