Jarvis Cocker Quotes - Page 3

You get to a certain age and you just want to prove that you can still rock - that you've still got it.

But I've got ideas. I keep my little notebook, I've always got that with me. Hopefully there's more stuff than nonsense in there.

I like bossy girls. I don't like girls who just do whatever they think you want them to do, and follow you around trying to please you all the time.

I've stuck to the same things for twenty years. I try to look like a slightly edgy geography teacher. Like what a geography teacher looked like when I was in school. Cords, sensible shoes and glasses. I never liked geography much as a subject though. In fact the only geography teacher I can remember from school was a woman who had a moustache.

I'm sure Sting's a lovely guy. It's just that nobody wants to be seen as that holier-than-thou thing. That over-earnestness is a bit of a problem with people in bands and celebrities or whatever.

In no way am I supporting or suggesting that a Conservative government is a good thing, far from it.

We live in an age where people are kind of a bit obsessed with celebrity and stuff. You can't help but be curious about it.

I'd been thinking I'd have to learn how to play really well, but obviously the message of punk was that you just learn three chords in a week and you're away.

There seems to be a contradiction in the fact that there's more music around and more channels or downloading music or more channels on TV, and yet at the same time, in some ways it doesn't seem to be as vital as it once was. It seems to be just another entertainment option or lifestyle enhancement aid or something.

There's the famous thing that the A&R man from the record company is supposed to do: He's supposed to come into the studio and listen to the songs you've been recording and then say, 'Guys, I don't hear any singles.' And then everybody falls into a terrible depression because you have to write one.

Well, once you've resigned yourself to the fact that you are the more mature pop performer and you're past the age you ever thought you would do it, you might as well do it as long as you can. As long as I can still lift a microphone, then I'll do it, you know.

Tabloids invoke freedom of speech, but they're not interested in that, they're just interested in who's shagging whom, who's got drunk. And if you take that pretend, faux moral standpoint, you end up with people in public life being completely boring. Like they've had their genitals removed.

There isn't much I find interesting to write about in middle-class life.

It's weird: The leader of the Conservative Party in England is two years younger than me, and I still don't really feel like a responsible adult.

I'm always nervous when I perform anyway.

If you get involved in music expecting to make a living out of it, then you've picked the wrong thing to do. That shouldn't really be in your mind.

For TV you also get those pre-interviews when researchers ask you what you're going to say. The pre-interview drives me insane. If they've already decided the outcome, why don't I just hand in an essay? Maybe if we talk we'll find something out. I'd rather just have an awkward pause.

I love the Beatles. I haven't named any kids after them but I still really love them. They were the first group that I was ever properly aware of. In my early teens I would sometimes stay in and listen to the radio all day in the hope that I would catch a song by them that I'd never heard before and be able to tape it on my radio-cassette player.

I speak onstage to try to establish some method of communication. The songs are supposed to be a way of communicating. But speech and drinks and sometimes chocolates are also a way of communicating.

Paris is like a beautiful woman, but she's very haughty, she's not interested in you. She's very nice to look at but you can't quite get it together with her.

The thing with Disney songs is they're very manipulative, very sentimental, but they do get you, you know - there's a kind of sadness to them and that kind of music doesn't really exist any more.

Hollywood is called Hollywood, but holly doesn't grow there. Right from the start it's based on a lie. But it's a very seductive lie, and we're still entranced by it.

You know when you're thinking about what you want to be when you grow up, or how you want your life to pan out. I couldn't imagine anything better than living in a hotel so you'd never have to worry about washing up, making the bed, anything like that, and having a servant to come in and play all your favourite TV programmes.

I would like to believe in an afterlife; it makes things more palatable. But I'm not banking on it.

People who make good music aren't necessarily nice people.