Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
From social pariah to King of the World? It's taken 45 years, so I've been able to adjust to it!
They're very different things, a poem and a song, you wouldn't think they would be, but they are.
There is a certain sentimental vibe in my home town of Manchester, which you would sort of expect.
The greatest threat to any artist is surrounding themselves with people who love everything they do.
I've always lived all over the place, and left Manchester the minute I was old enough to steal a car.
If you don't like The Ramones, you don't like rock 'n'roll. They're like The Beach Boys without the sea.
When you're doing poetry like mine that rhymes, it's very easy to sound like a song that didn't work out!
Where I grew up, the one unmistakable sign of homosexuality was to betray some interest in your appearance.
I'm a great believer in the capsule wardrobe - a wardrobe where's there's a limited palate of black colours.
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 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.
By the '80s, anything to do with punk was perceived as rancid. Me being known as the 'punk poet' meant my work and I plummeted.
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.'
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
At the beginning, there was no chance I'd get published so I thought I'd give it a go live. I had to perform in rock band places and working men's clubs, where you wouldn't expect to find poetry. I ploughed a lonely furrow.
I went to what can only be described as a slum school in Salford - rough and full of trainee punks - but I was very lucky in that I had one inspiring teacher, John Malone, who gave the whole class an interest in romantic poetry.
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.
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 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.
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.