I was always very softly spoken and kinda looked after myself.

I just wanted to get on telly. I wasn't a massive Oasis fan, but I had to be in order to get on the telly.

Each man kills the things he loves. I recognise that in myself - in relationships, even with guitars - beautiful things that I've had and wilfully destroyed.

Spitalfields - I often find myself milling around there. I always go down Spitalfields whenever I can.

Music and fashion and art - they were the things we were willing to die for. 'Is my hair all right? Have you heard this tune?' They're the things that saved us. They're the things that are saving kids on Nuneaton council estates. There's no other way out.

It's never going to be hipster because you've got that smell that the sea gives out twice a day. That's why Margate will never be gentrified. However, there is art-led regeneration.

Inverted snobbery is just as dangerous as snobbery itself, you know - that pride in having nothing.

It was always my ambition to be on the cover of a free gay magazine.

The only way I see myself in a serious relationship is if I am toning it down a bit.

I have a distinct memory of friends I had at school whose parents were, for want of a better word, bohemian. That was the kind of England that I thought I should have belonged to.

My family used to say, point-blank, 'We'd support you if we thought you could sing, or we thought you could write songs, but you can't.'

So many actors say, 'Oh, I can't bear to see myself on screen,' but it's not true. Everyone loves to see themselves from a good angle.

Money wasn't important to me. Once I discovered music, I was quite happy to live as a bum. As long as I had my music and my band, I was happy.

I'm always looking over my shoulder.

I have too many debts with the wrong people.

I'm always nervous before playing a gig, to tell you the truth. It's what nearly did me in when I was with the Libertines. I just couldn't handle it.

When you're young and idealistic, you don't care: you'll play to no one, in your bedroom - like kids with football - you'll play anywhere; you just love the music. And then, bang - soon as you're in the industry, you think that's the dream. But that's when the dream starts to end.

I knew I had I a better album than 'Up the Bracket' in me, and I wanted to record it. But I was told we've got to keep touring, keep promoting. That was the first time I realised we were on a conveyor belt.

Anyone can feel amazing if you're with someone you love.

I can't see why people call me a bad influence. I meet a lot of kids who are into music. I spend as much time as I can with them. I listen to their demos, and I'm encouraging.

No, I never surround myself with people I hate.

In a way, I'm always working with Mick Jones. I feel like he's watching over me all the time. We talk about everything: history quite a lot. Balloons and wars and old football players. The Clash.

I used to write songs to get love, but now that I have it, I don't feel the need to anymore.

I wish I had better contact with my family.

Maybe I'm actually an optimist.

The only thing that makes sense to me that I've learnt over the years is knocking tunes together.

I've lived in Liverpool, London, Belfast, Germany, Coventry, Dorset, and Cyprus.

That was my fantasy, actually - to become a billionaire, buy the 'Sun' and the 'Mirror,' and close them down.

I like touring. It's like a school trip.

I'd never say I wouldn't fight a war. In different ages, I would have done. I'd have fought the Vikings.

At school, I was always the new boy, so I always went in for the school play. It was a way of breaking the ice and making friends with pupils and teachers for however long I had before moving on.

I've always enjoyed acting, and there's more than a degree of it involved in singing live on stage.

I've turned my back on fancy parties and red carpets. I'm a writer, and if I did that, I'd never get anything done.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

If it's a beautiful day, I love taking walks. The walks are always aimless.

The most powerful force in American politics is not anger, it's nostalgia.

The replenishing thing that comes with a nap - you end up with two mornings in a day.

I was the oldest of seven kids, so I had no older brother who would say, 'Schmuck, don't do that.'

Everybody who went to Vietnam carries his or her own version of the war. Only 10 percent engaged in combat; the American elephant, pursuing the Vietnamese grasshopper, was extraordinarily heavy with logistical support.

There is a growing feeling that perhaps Texas is really another country, a place where the skies, the disasters, the diamonds, the politicians, the women, the fortunes, the football players and the murders are all bigger than anywhere else.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a newspaperman originally in Colombia. He talked about - and I agree - how everybody has a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

For me reading a book is what I like doing, curled up in a corner in a comfortable chair.

You can't be a reporter using Google. It can be a tool. But you have to get out of the house.

For those without money, the road to that treasure house of the imagination begins at the public library.

In 1962, I wrote a series about 42nd Street called 'Welcome to Lostville.' One result was that the young Bob Dylan read it and invited me to his first concert at Town Hall; the result was a kind of friendship that years later led to my liner notes for 'Blood on the Tracks.'

All good sports reporters know that the best stories are in the loser's locker room.

I always make a distinction between nostalgia and sentimentality. Nostalgia is genuine - you mourn things that actually happened.

What would Chaucer have written about if men were perfect?

The blogosphere might be very useful as propaganda or as therapy. But it's not journalism.

I was born in 1935. But my mother and father - who were immigrants from Ireland - and everybody that I knew growing up in Brooklyn came out of the Depression, and they were remarkable people.