Top 110 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Ashcroft - Page 2

I've got kids now; it changes you radically.

You can radically change a person's life with a tune. I don't think people truly understand or appreciate how powerful that is.

Really, I listen to more hip hop probably than most other things. That's where I get a lot of my influence from because it's so eclectic. So that's what I love.

Without music and creativity, I'd need other forms of therapy. But for me, the life process is the process of healing yourself. 'Break the Night' is about offering hope to people, about breaking through the darkness.

I lost a good friend a few years ago, and it happened quite suddenly. Any event like that leaves you with questions. Would a phone call have made a difference? Did the person know that you were there for them?

The Grime guys have kind of rewritten the blueprint for people as far as creativity, songwriting, ownership, doing your own videos... So they're sending out a real positive message I think to people, that you can do it yourself in a punk way, and you can still potentially be successful and get to people.

Ed Sheeran? I don't like the fact he gets a lot of stick. I like the fact he works hard, and God knows how much money he pays to the tax man each year.

Glasgow Barrowlands is the greatest concert venue in the world.

Creativity, for me, is almost like therapy; my songs take you into the underbelly of my mind, and there's some dark stuff in there.

Pop music might seem banal and simple to some people, but it's what it expresses that counts.

Of course, fatherhood fundamentally changes a lot of your life, but it enriches you, too.

I think I was born to be a songwriter.

I'm totally up for experimental music. I'm up for music that they don't play on the radio, and I take in all of it. But my thing, the thing that comes most natural to me, is making the stuff that has a melody; it has a soul to it, yet it's head music.

I'm not driven by fame or success. I'm quite a shy, introverted person, and I could easily melt away into the background.

There's lots of people I'd love to work with.

The Richard Ashcroft of 1992 would have struggled to imagine the path my life has taken - he would be amazed at the changes in my song writing.

I am so lucky that I have been part of and written songs that will always resonate no matter how old they get.

You have to build yourself up a bit. You have to believe in yourself, because not that many other people will, you know?

If you start shaping everything you do trying to be in step with whatever is going on in the world, you're often out of step by the time people hear it. It's a bit like fashion.

If I was a painter, I would have hundreds of finished and unfinished canvases in my studio waiting for people to see, and it is the same with my music. I've got so many pieces of music and songs waiting to be heard.

Not many people come out of a big band as the lead singer/songwriter and making a record, and all of a sudden we're all happily sailing at the same pace as we were before.

It's difficult to be the spokesperson for something that internally is falling apart. That's a tremendous amount of pressure to put on one person, to be the guy who gives all the quotes, all the interviews.

We all have our daily prescription of yoga, football, religion, or whatever gets us through that day. My thing is music. It's the only thing that gives me a sense of calm and balance. It's the thing I know I'm good at.

What happened in the '70s was albums and concerts began making a hell of a lot more money, and then the suits got involved.

The mad thing is, most of my life, when I'm not in a dark mood, it's been humour that's got me through. The only way to get through this business is by laughing.

I'd definitely say I'm a depressive, someone who suffers from depression.

George Best was my idol. I got a chance to meet him once.

When I read about Gram Parsons' dream of this Cosmic American Music when I was in my late teens, that stuck with me: that idea, that ambition, to draw off the roots of music but take it somewhere fresh.

I'm a strong person, but every man has his limits.

The most sacred thing you can get is time. That's all people want on their death bed; that's what it's all about.

We're the most talented musical island ever.

I am a family man, and I have children.

You can find the greatest sound of all time, and someone's going to squash it down to a tiny little earphone anyway or play it through the computer, and that is a big thing people have to think about now.

Sometimes, you're before your time with ideas, and you have to accept that you can't know.

I probably suffered from a narcissistic disorder in some way.

You know, rock n' roll's an old carcass: it's one big cliche. It's so difficult to do anything that has any sense of freshness or vitality or meaning. But that's what I'm trying to do, to give it new meaning.

I've got a letter from the Dalai Lama at home.

The greatest footballers take the sport into the world of art, of performance.

My job is to make grown men cry, to blow people's minds and elevate them, make them transcend and unlock emotions that have been repressed by life, their job, situation - that's what I do.

I was always going to be vulnerable when I left the Verve. It was a hardening experience for me. People saw me stripped down and decided to have their shot. I suppose they wanted to take me down a peg.

What do people really believe in any more apart from sport and music?

I'm intrigued by all that, by religions, I'm intrigued by Jesus Christ. It's all fascinating.

Come back down to basics. The basic things of life, the basic things for me are the things that turn me on more than anything. I'm actually trying to go back from where I was running from...the more essential things that I was ignoring.

I don't know if I have a problem expressing joy, but the difficulty is in making an album, a piece of music that really does reflect life rather than the one dimension. I have a problem in trying to make a complete trip record.

Any true musician, true artist, knows that when they're in that point of total artistic creation, whether on stage or in the studio or writing or whatever, that's the closest moment [to creation]. And that's what keeps all these people addicted to getting back to that moment again.

To build public support for what they're doing, scientists are always going to say there is the prospect to cure all these horrible diseases, but they're cautious for the most part in saying when those cures will arrive.

I'm one of those people. I can be sold by the candy in life, and then it can be stripped away within a split second and I feel like I've seen too much. And that's the way, I've been like that most of my life, so I could never say I was there yet in any stretch of the imagination.

When you're in doubt about the future and you're in doubt about how solid this thing is that you're laying your life and your soul on the line for, you will probably retract into yourself a little bit and think, No, there's only so much I can give to something that everyone doesn't believe in. There's been chipping away, people have been chipping away at it, so it's just you in the spotlight in front of all these people.

Eyes open wide, looking at the heavens with a tear in my eye.

I can't pin myself on any fixed religion, really. I'm just one of those sad, early-century people who just drifts around and picks up a bit of this and a bit of that. I was confirmed a Christian when I was a kid purely because I wanted a piece of jewelry, so I don't know whether this is just another extension of that.