Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by John Cooper Clarke
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English poet John Cooper Clarke.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
The one thing I got right was that I already looked like a punk when punk arrived.
People who believe in God are happier than those who don't.
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.
If you don't like The Ramones, you don't like rock 'n'roll. They're like The Beach Boys without the sea.
I had TB as a boy. They said my skeletal frame never developed properly.
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.
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.
The '80s were a lost decade.
Somebody up there likes me. It ain't like I've followed a well trodden trajectory.
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.
When I sit down to eat, the greatest spice of all is hunger.
I never saw a painting that would not be improved by the addition of tropical fish.
My trouser needs are simple: a narrow leg in a dark colour, with jean detailing.
I would describe my style of dress as careful.
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.
The very pointlessness of a sea walk is it's attractiveness to me.
A much underrated garment, the jegging: they never need ironing and they hold their colour.
I'm not one of nature's campers. I'm not even a glamper.
It's miserable wearing black all the time, unless you're Johnny Cash.
I love being on my bike, but I don't consider that a sport: it's too pleasant.
I don't go looking for new fads.
If I'd have known how much fun fatherhood would be, I would have started way earlier than 45.
Dutch food is terrible, I think. What sort of person starts the day with egg and cheese?
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.
The only casual item I own is a Levi's jacket.
I've never met a happy atheist.
When you write poetry you are always addressing the world somehow.
My dad was an electrical engineer.
Doris Day was the perfect woman.
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.
I've always lived all over the place, and left Manchester the minute I was old enough to steal a car.
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.
To approach a poem as if it is a puzzle to be understood is to miss the point.
Too many memoirs focus on childhoods and it's a bit turgid.
I've got a speech impediment.
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.
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 quite like cooking, but not to the extent that I look on a kitchen as a domain.
Where I grew up, the one unmistakable sign of homosexuality was to betray some interest in your appearance.
I hate chickpeas. I like hummus but I ate that before I realised it was made out of chickpeas.
No one wants to be a source of anxiety to everybody they know.
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.
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.
It took me 30 years for people to consider me an overnight success.
I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?
Happiness is the target one only has to aim at in order to miss.
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.
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 love talking about anything, except for myself.
I'm dead fussy about food: I don't eat junk.
I wish I could drive.
To make the hips the focal point of a pair of trousers is, to me, a fashion mistake.
I love Charles Baudelaire. Him and Shakespeare are the only people I think are better than me.
I'm a great believer in the capsule wardrobe - a wardrobe where's there's a limited palate of black colours.
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.
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.
Being unapologetic means never having to say you're sorry.
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 judge by appearances. People tell me I shouldn't.
If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.
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