Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I actually do sing sometimes.
We didn't feel we fitted into the '80s.
When we were kids, Stoke was massive in Norway.
I've never been uncomfortable being a frontman.
Fun is only possible if you have a mindset that allows it.
I love just being in the sphere of nothingness looking inwards.
I didn't feel like I fitted in. I felt like I was a hindrance to A-ha.
I'm not an entertainer; I'm an engager. I never sell myself, in a sense.
Anything can be interesting as long as you access it from the right angle.
I can choose to be a serious musician, but the sex symbol part is not up to me.
The video was of paramount importance, because 'Take on Me' was not an instant hit.
Just to be spontaneous and free is life's biggest luxury and privilege when life is so busy.
People have a wild response to something, and they want it. Sometimes people lose themselves.
The hardest thing to have is success, because it seems to tell people what you are. But it doesn't.
The record company didn't know what we looked like at first. They were all excited about our tapes.
I'd known since I was 17 that I was going to be a star. It was a strange feeling but a very real one.
If looks help, that's great, but we don't want it to be the featured thing. It's totally superficial.
I feel very strong about 'Brother.' This is me. I've been writing with a much more free sky, open and free.
I'm attracted to people who are older rather than younger, and all ages have their potential and limitations.
Although I would like to describe the perfect day, I can't. Because a perfect day is one where there is no plan.
If you respond to pop music as an older person, then it's your game. But this business has a tremendously visual focus.
For a lot of fans from the early days, they probably had issues they were A-ha fans, because it probably wasn't 'cool.'
I do respond to the ideas behind the Eurovision and 'The X Factor,' but they're both so limiting and very, very shallow.
People think the chorus is the hard part in 'Take on Me,' but they're wrong. The hard part was making the verses bounce.
I am naturally prone to fun or to be funny, but when I talk about myself in interviews, then it's an intellectual exercise.
It's great to play live. I love it and appreciate it more than I did in the early days. It's a central part of being in A-ha.
We've never been very good at servicing fans. I'm here to concentrate on music, not to be a pen pal to people who write to me.
We ceased to be a band the moment we made it. It left us with nothing. We felt like a failure although we had commercial success.
We got sick of interviews and performances - for a long time, it came back to doing 'Take on Me.' It became a circus number instead of music.
We had a large spell in 1985-86, but we would have had to move to the States and be available all the time, so we chose to remain a European act.
The pin-up thing took us completely by surprise. I found it hard because I got singled out, and I didn't like it. There was a lot of disillusionment.
One of the good things about being away is to digest things and maybe learn from things and see if there are better ways to get to where you want to be.
I do love beauty. I love beautiful tilings. I grow orchids and collect butterflies. But when it comes to relationships, you have to find the person inside.
We wanted the freedom to be playful, to experiment and do what we felt like doing, but we were heavily affected by the success that the first record gave us.
I don't abuse my body - I don't drink much alcohol, don't smoke and never have - but that's the same of many people. I don't think I've ever stopped ageing myself.
Since I travel so much, my perfect Sunday would start by waking up at home with my partner Inez. We'd have breakfast with our little girl Karmen, maybe in our garden.
We were totally confident that we would make it internationally. We had no money or instruments. We used cake tins or bottles with water in them - anything to make sounds.
A-ha is not me, Paul, or Magne: it is its own individual that has its own identity and characteristics. It is a result of a particular meeting point between the three of us.
We had to leave Norway and go where it was all happening, which was London. We loved it there, but it was hard. We had no money - we were literally starving. It started to get ugly.
My brother was an avid Stoke City fan and a good footballer. We shared a room, growing up, and the walls were covered with 1970s Stoke players, like Peter Shilton, Gordon Banks, and Jimmy Greenhoff.
We became such darlings of a certain type of media. We became a package; we became easy to sell: these three golden nuggets that could pour out all the goods. It was all exposure in an almost violent way.
Mind you, the limelight exists anywhere in the world. When you're not in the U.K., it can be as active somewhere else in the world, and for me, that's more or less been the case, so I never dropped out of the limelight in that sense.
I grew up in a small mountain town in Norway, and I remember miming to the Beatles on the couch when I was about six, singing into a broomstick, but this was a country that only had one radio station. There was no music around, really.
We sent a guy called Terry Slater a couple of demos, using the last of our money. And then things turned. He landed us a deal with Warners and said just keep coming up with songs, because when success hits you, you won't even know your name.
If I didn't travel so much, maybe my perfect Sunday would be skin diving on a coral reef - not scuba diving, as skin diving is more physical, and I prefer the lightness of it. Skin diving means wearing just goggles. Oh, I could wear some trunks, maybe.
My younger brother was a big Stoke fan, and I was sucked into it. I was kind of waking up every morning and looking at Gordon Banks' face! We had all these small football cards - literally hundreds of them - and swapping them was the currency back then.
I had always wanted to make music on a big scale but never knew how it was going happen - until I saw a band in Oslo called Bridges. I was stunned. They had everything. The only thing they didn't have was me. I knew I needed to join, not for my own sake but for the band's. I knew I was a necessary ingredient.