Tony Wilson quotes:

Richard Branson once said: 'Tony's very good at selling bands and he's very good at making television programmes. But he'll never be great at either, until he decides which one he wants to do.' I entirely accept that. That doesn't matter to me very much. I like the irony of the two lives.

I am not a piece of hash. I'm in charge of Factory Records. I think.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

I'm a minor player in my own life story.

There is no celebrity quite as powerful as the local, homegrown celebrity.

Energy, energy? Energy is, is, it's nothing more than a lot of new age hokum masquerading as religion.

That came from my mother. She was the biggest influence on my life. I remember once refusing to get on a bus with her because she was wearing a mink, and I thought we should be taking a taxi. She just said, 'Who cares what people think?' and I remember sitting on that bus, being utterly embarrassed, but knowing somehow that she was totally correct.

If you live in Birmingham, then being awake is not necessarily a desirable state.

Every band needs it's own special chemistry. And Bez was a very good chemist.

The special relationship between the region and a regional celebrity means that people feel that they have a special investment in you.

I'll just say one word: Icarus. If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more.

Most of all, I love Manchester. The crumbling warehouses, the railway arches, the cheap abundant drugs. That's what did it in the end. Not the money, not the music, not even the guns. That is my heroic flaw: my excess of civic pride.

This is Manchester, we do things differently here

I've been a minor celebrity since I was 23 years old,

Nothing useless can be truly beautiful.

When forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend.