Jarvis Cocker quotes:

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks, there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.

I'm not a religious person but I do like the idea of Sunday as a day set apart from the rest of the week. It's nice to have a period of reflection and have time to think about things.

Its OK to grow up, just as long as you don't grow old. Face it you are young.

Pulp existed for 12 years before we got famous. Now, you could say that was just lack of imagination, but it's some kind of quality isn't it? Tenacity. You could also say it was sloth.

As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield, I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn't actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course, as we all know from fairy stories, when you achieve that ambition, you find out you don't want it.

I think basically becoming famous has taken the place of going to Heaven in modern society, hasn't it? That's the place where your dreams will come true. It's an act of faith now; they think that's going to sort things out.

I appreciate people who try and use language in an interesting way.

Oh you know, I've been writing a novel.

The thing about radio is that it's got an intimate feel. What I like is that you don't have to give it your full attention - you can still do something else that the same time, whereas TV is all-enveloping: you have to sit there and pay attention to it, and give yourself over to it. You have to surrender to it, but you don't with radio.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

I recently spent quite a bit of time in Sheffield, England, which is where I'm from. I wouldn't move back there, but it's funny when you spend a bit of time in the place where you were brought up. You kind of realize how that place has had quite a big effect on you or made you a certain way.

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.

A Conservative government is necessary. There is no credible alternative.

Every woman I've had a relationship with has found this maddening; the fact that I will talk about anything on the stage, and reveal all this stuff, and yet when I'm at home, I clam up and won't discuss anything intimate or personal.

I think the credit crunch is a brilliant thing. We should all stop moaning and start celebrating. When times are tough, it's an opportunity to start looking at life in a different way.

I'd never really wanted to have a really 'private' life before. But when somebody starts delving into it and printing details through the tabloids for shagging people you shouldn't have shagged, then that probably made me shy away a bit more from giving too much away.

I travel backwards and forwards quite a lot. I live very near to the train station. I'm kind of playing at being an expatriate, I suppose.

I'm always amazed by people who blog all the time and tweet all the time, and still get things done. I don't know how they do it.

I always thought that I might retire from any form of sexuality by the age of 40 and just become a dignified older person.

Silver Machine still sounds really modern with all the white noise. It's a bit punky in a way. They were ahead of their time.

Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can't rescue a dog of a song.

My route so far through life hasn't been particularly logical, or even thought out.

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.

Also, because people like to multitask, in a way if you've got a bit of music on in the background and the lyrical content is making you want to listen to it, then that would probably put you off the texting you wanted to do. I think people like things that just make that right kind of noise, but leave your brain free to do something else.

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.

You know when you get into that thing where people want to discuss the relationship? I'd rather discuss what was on telly, avoid the issue, discuss anything other than the relationship.

Don't think that the things around you don't count, because they do.

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 not very keen on ageing. I'm not keen on the physical decay. I probably am quite vain. I think you want to try and look OK for the benefit of other people.

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.

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.

The most entertaining songs don't always come from a nice place. In songs where I think I'm being really sensitive, they seem quite boring actually. I've found that the songs that come out of nastier, more misanthropic places are better.

Being chronically shy I needed to create a persona for myself and be involved with a band where I could be ruler of my own kingdom. Then Pulp became hugely popular and I lost control of it, which is when it all went wrong.

I got a pair of red, synthetic satin women's pants through the post the other day with a phone number on. That was quite strange. I haven't tried the phone number. In times of stress I may.

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.

Part of why I started a band was due to feelings of shyness and social ineptitude. I saw it as some way of being able to interact with people from a safe distance.

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.

There are some quite funny things about getting famous and stuff, but I think there comes a point where you have to think to yourself, "Well, am I doing this because I want to go to a party and meet Britney Spears? Or am I doing it because I want to create something that excites me?"

When I was in Pulp, I actively did more TV stuff because that was during the Great Britpop Wars, and it seemed important to prove that indie people could speak. That war doesn't exist anymore.

Hawkwind are one of those bands that people introduce you to because you don't see them on the covers of magazines. I'd heard 'Silver Machine' but Russell Senior, who was in Pulp, got me into them. They had a song called 'Master Of The Universe' and we nicked the title in 1985 for one of our songs.

Will you see Pulp again? Who knows. I'm not stoking those particular rumours.

To look for some kind of insight or meaning in pop songs is not really - well there's plenty of other places where you should probably look first before you start looking for it in a pop song. I guess it was just because I was really into music as a child, and I wanted it to say more. It was the thing, wasn't it? And now it isn't.

The main thing I don't like about myself is an absurd level of self-consciousness that makes any sort of social encounter an ordeal for me.

In some ways, I always thought you're better off behaving like a rock star when you're a normal person. Because if you do it as a rock star, you'll end up in the papers and your life will be made a misery.

Anyone who thinks they're sexy needs their head checked.

I am passionate about keeping the human dimension in things. You have to keep the rough edges and the inconsistencies, that's what makes it interesting. I've always striven to be as sloppy as possible.

I guess I'm fairly insistent and maybe consistent. If I decide I'll do something, I generally will.

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.

I know that some filmmakers strive for a kind of naturalistic approach, but you're never going to capture something that's really natural - just the simple fact that you choose to put a frame around something means that you've already chosen one particular thing to put more attention on.

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

I've always had an eye for nature, but it's the sort of thing to keep quiet about, because I don't want to come across as a mad hippy. But it makes sense to appreciate those things.

Money isn't important, but you have to have enough, so you don't have to think about it. Thinking about money is a drag.

It's good that I managed to hoodwink so many people. I am actually not that nice a person.

We've always been a bit out of touch with reality.

You write a song about how you think at the time, and then gradually you drift away from that, and when it's far enough in the past, that's when you think, 'Now I have to write something new.'

Human beings aren't meant to be solely consumers - eventually, something has to come out. Otherwise, I don't really see what the point of all that consumption is. The idea behind watching things and listening to things is that it stirs something within you, and hopefully that will stimulate you to then create your own thing.

I don't really care what someone's background is; creativity can come from any background.

I love the Internet, but it's hard not to get lost in it. It's not like a book where you start and get to the end. It's like we've found a way to encapsulate all of human knowledge within one thing only to learn that you can't do that. It's an overabundance of information.

Culture shouldn't be a pacifying thing. It shouldn't be something that you just passively accept. I think it should be something that, in some ways, is quite disruptive - makes you think and question things, and actually sparks debate.

If you wanted to be a creative person and you are confronted with the sum product of mankind's creativity up to this moment in history, Internet is pretty daunting, like, "Where can I fit my voice in amongst all that?"

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.

One of the problems of our modern world is that there's a lot of things to work through, but, at some point, everybody should take a pause from that and make something, so that it's not just all one-way traffic.

You don't often hear people say, 'Oh, since he's been taking them drugs, he's such a nice person! He's really come out of his shell, he's really nice, he's blossomed'.

The best thing you can give someone is the freedom to make their own mind up - and then, if it's not working out 5 years later, you can give your opinion.

My basic position is that the more mixed the society and the more mobility there is in it, the better. That's what makes things interesting. When you get a homogenous society, it's very, very dull, whether that's all working class or all upper class, because everybody thinks the same, everybody looks the same.

I'm a sluggish character; I'm a bit slow. For some reason I find it hard to work quickly.

For me, the great thing about music is that anybody can do it.

If you're in a band or think of yourself as a slightly creative person, you can get quite self-indulgent, so sometimes it's nice to have those people who bring you down to earth, but in a pleasant way.

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 think life is more interesting when everybody's jumbled up together. When people separate out into cliques and things, it's okay, but it's a bit limiting. You can always learn things from other people. This is my theory.

You can do anything when you're famous. That's why famous people are so dumb.

I do want to have that feeling that people are actively involved in something, rather than just consuming something. I suppose that's what it comes down to, because it's such a dominant capitalist society, everything becomes a consumer product. And I don't think that's really appropriate to the creative arts, really.

I always feel like there are specific things about Houston. There's one museum in particular in Houston. So many of the things that I'm interested in now I can sort of trace back to that museum, which introduced me to them.

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

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.

In a song you can kind of stage-manage everything so that it puts you in a good light. And once a song is recorded, it always performs well.

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 would rather kill myself than play my own music... I can't stand it when people do that.

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.

If you perform on a stage or you sing a song, it's like you sing your song, and then the words go into the air, and then they go into somebody's body through their ears, so it's kind of like penetrating somebody. It's kind of like having sex with somebody - but, obviously, from a great distance.

I do write songs with a political dimension to them sometimes, but I'm always slightly appalled by it when I do.

I believe that humans adapt to circumstance. The Internet is quite an unprecedented circumstance, so it's going to take people a while to get their heads around it.

What people have to make sure of is that they're not replicating something that already exists. You really have to ask yourself: "Is there a point in me doing this? Has this already been said before? Is this moving things along or is this just adding to the giant pile of junk that's already there?"

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

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.

It's funny how you can intensely investigate one very particular thing, and then it can lead you to other things through links and stuff like that. It's like you're going on this selective, very precise detour. But then it is strange because with it being so quick, there must be a difference.

Pornography takes all the reality out of sex and Disney does that to family life.

Noise is an easy thing to hide behind. If you make a lot of noise and shout behind that, nobody can tell what you're singing.

I am proud, and more than a little excited, to be asked to work with Faber in an editorial capacity. It is my dearest hope that we will produce some fantastic books together.

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.

The working class has been turned into a consuming class - a situation has been created where people value their worth by what they can afford.

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

[Jeffrey Lewis is] The best lyricist working in the US today.

The good thing about people really is their iffy-ness and dodginess, isnt it?

I used to look at older people who bothered to still attend nightclubs and couldn't help but wonder why. Didn't they realize how foolish they looked? Of course, now that I'm one of those people myself, I have decided that such rules don't apply to me.

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

Everybody's a bit screwed up, you know. You can take it as symptoms of a disorder, or you can take it as personality. Me, I'd rather think it as parts of personality.