Most cities are the same.

I love the Arctic Monkeys!

The '80s were a lost decade.

I've got a speech impediment.

I don't go looking for new fads.

My dad was an electrical engineer.

My favourite writers are columnists.

Poverty - the one thing money can't buy

I'm dead fussy about food: I don't eat junk.

I don't have secrets, my life's an open book.

The only casual item I own is a Levi's jacket.

I would describe my style of dress as careful.

I judge by appearances. People tell me I shouldn't.

I eat like a pig. Tripe is the only thing I won't eat.

My declining allure is a source of great sadness to me.

To convey one’s mood in seventeen syllables is very diffic

I'd like to be rich, but without all the downside of fame.

Being unapologetic means never having to say you're sorry.

Too many memoirs focus on childhoods and it's a bit turgid.

When I sit down to eat, the greatest spice of all is hunger.

I crack myself up. Even I don't know what I'm going to say next.

Happiness is the target one only has to aim at in order to miss.

The very pointlessness of a sea walk is it's attractiveness to me.

When you write poetry you are always addressing the world somehow.

It took me 30 years for people to consider me an overnight success.

It's miserable wearing black all the time, unless you're Johnny Cash.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

I had TB as a boy. They said my skeletal frame never developed properly.

It amazes me there are movies about writers… such inert, uneventful lives.

I'm not giving away sartorial secrets but the trousers I wear cost 19 quid.

I'm a great reader of credits; I never leave the cinema before they finish.

All the best musicians started out in church; Jesus invented rock 'n' roll.

I've been kept from honest employment for a long, long time now. Thank God!

With charm you’ve got to get up close to see it; style slaps you in the face.

I love being on my bike, but I don't consider that a sport: it's too pleasant.

To approach a poem as if it is a puzzle to be understood is to miss the point.

My trouser needs are simple: a narrow leg in a dark colour, with jean detailing.

If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.

I quite like cooking, but not to the extent that I look on a kitchen as a domain.

The one thing I got right was that I already looked like a punk when punk arrived.

Somebody up there likes me. It ain't like I've followed a well trodden trajectory.

I never saw a painting that would not be improved by the addition of tropical fish.

To make the hips the focal point of a pair of trousers is, to me, a fashion mistake.

Dutch food is terrible, I think. What sort of person starts the day with egg and cheese?

A much underrated garment, the jegging: they never need ironing and they hold their colour.

If I'd have known how much fun fatherhood would be, I would have started way earlier than 45.

I love Charles Baudelaire. Him and Shakespeare are the only people I think are better than me.

I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?

I hate chickpeas. I like hummus but I ate that before I realised it was made out of chickpeas.

Idleness - a job that you have to go to, but not necessarily do anything - is the poet's friend.

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