Chris Martin Quotes

I come from a farming community in the west of England, where the very idea of going to America was a golden dream. There’s still a part of me every morning can’t believe that we are allowed to be there. There is always a sense of possibility. Of course it has its challenges and its ups and downs, but there is always an optimism that I find exciting. Maybe it’s because the sun shines in LA every day and you are surrounded by lots of other creative people, but I feel a great sense of, ‘OK, what can we make?’ And it’s nice to be by the seaside. I feel very grateful. source

Up until 23, the concept of death hadn't occurred to me, then someone asked me if I'd heard about Jonty, this friend from school. I said, "No, what?" "He's dead." I used to play football with him. That's amazing, isn't it? Life is right now. It's not a morbid realisation, it's exciting, I find that feeling of time constraint very liberating. Nobody has an answer. We all die in the end. So come on, let's do something now. source

I guess it's maybe because the industry has been struggling and you don't sell 50 million in your first production, all the numbers are different from when we all started. I see that there's quite good camaraderie (between musicians). Obviously, there are those who want to stay out of it. I don't know about music, but in backstage or at airports, everyone seems to get along very well. source

I do an hour's yoga and go running every day. Then I see a picture of myself and I still look like a skinny, potbellied idiot - and I thought I had turned into this superhunk! source

He (Jonny) just has a way of writing melodies that is perfect… I just love his playing so much. And in that song, we are always saying go and do a solo one day and he’s like, "I don’t do solo’s" and we sort of got him to do… And that’s his standing-on-a-mountain moment. That’s why being in a band is the best job in the world because your best friends bring in bits of music that you wouldn’t thought of and you piece it all together and you get Optimus Prime! source

One day in Haiti I was talking to a farmer. I said, 'I don't have any solution to these problems.' He said, 'Of course you don't! You're a singer.' He was right. Music is what I live for - and as Coldplay, our main job is to make the best music we can. But I hope that in our small way we can do something to raise awareness.

No human being is only positive or negative. White or black, we all have both sides, the bright and the dark. There are no angels, it's a myth, nobody is a single thing, it's easy to fall into cynicism because wherever you look there are aggressions, war, destruction. I get it, ok? And it's true that for some Imagine [song by John Lennon] will tell you absolutely nothing. And if you have lost your cousin in an attack you would not want to hear it, you would be furious.

You get summoned to their castle, then you wait for about a week in a small room where you're just fed very minimally and if you survive that stage about fifteen another people, whoever survives that gets through the next stage where you get to play tennis with Jay and if you beat him twice you get sent through to meet the rest of Destiny's Child. They check you for lice and bugs and if they deem you cleaned up then you can meet Beyoncé behind the screen.

The whole rock star myth, which is 40 years old and basically nonsense, has nothing to do with being a rock star. Everybody gets trashed and breaks things. By that standard, plumbers and heating engineers are just as rock 'n' roll as rock stars.

I think girls are amazing but I also feel really guilty about doing stuff with someone that you don't really like. I don't believe there is such a thing as casual sex. Someone always gets hurt and I hate that feeling. One thing about girls is that I get scared. I get scared of my feelings being in the hands of another person, I know that feeling of waiting for a girl to call. That's scary.

Q: Do you think of your band as a gang or a family?

We are very much a band and we always have been, and we are more than ever. In our personal lives and our professional lives, there’s this thing that links us where we would do anything for the others and its a very powerful feeling, to go have gone through everything we’ve been through with the same group of people. We knew each other when we had nothing. source

What keeps me going is that I could die tomorrow so I’m always trying to live every day. source

Q: Are you worried that if you start living it up you'll stop writing good songs?

I have been reading recently about synesthesia, in this case, the association of music and other sensory information with colors and I realized that I probably have a little or a lot of that current. I don't think it's unusual for songwriters. When I think of other people's songs or albums, a color comes to my mind.