John Cooper Clarke Quotes

My paternal grandfather, George, had been a regular soldier in India until chucking-out time in 1948, and funnily enough bore an uncanny resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi (who apparently suffered from corns and bad breath, in other words a supercallousedfragilemysticplaguedwithhalitosis, as Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke almost sang).

Somebody once said that a wedding is a funeral where you can smell your own flowers. Well, that's a harsh judgement in my book. I prefer to see it as a sexual relationship that is recognised by the police.

[on his Dad] He didn't share the general public's dim view of the late Joseph Stalin.

I always judge people by appearances; don't you anyway? I think clothes are important; that's where the nudist camp falls down.

Everyone thinks they'll make a better judge than any judge don't they? You see these nonces getting off with a six quid fine and being given a house next door to a school. And you think 'I wouldn't have done that'.

My advice to any poet; you have to be idle to write it. A pen, a notebook and idleness, those are the three requisites for the manufacture of poetry.

You can count on him. He'll always let you down.

Drugs eh! That's the trouble; they're indiscriminate. The good memories go with the fuckin' shit you're tryin' to block out.

Do not go mental, and with that, goodnight.

I'm a short-term nostalgic; things were great ten minutes ago. If only I could go back there. At my time of life I suffer from déjà vu and amnesia at the same time; I can't remember what happens next.

Having been a tubercular kid with a malformed physique, I have a dread of any situation where the shedding of garments might be required. I can't even swim.

It was quite a tough school. Put it this way, we had our own coroner.

[on the fear of a nervous breakdown] I don't think I ever lost this fear. It turned me into a default existentialist by the time I was six: I quickly learned that the pursuit of happiness is largely pointless, happiness being the only target one merely has to aim at in order to miss.

Never leave a bookies with a smile on your face.

Not only do I not have a mobile 'phone, I haven't got a computer. I don't employ any artificial intelligence of any kind. People say to me, "Oh, you should have a computer, they can do this...." I say "Look, I know how fuckin' great they are. That's why, that's the very reason I can't have one." You know I'll just watch a bit of Dion and the Belmonts, then I'll go out...oh, no, what was that Elvis film....oh that reminds me, that Grace Kelly movie...I'll just download this Marx Brothers' clip. You know what I mean, I'd never get out of the fuckin' house. I'd fuckin' die. You'd find me dead with a pizza box with mi arse in the air and mi pants round mi ankles in front of a flickerin' fuckin' computer screen. He never went out when we bought him that computer, he never went out again, he never went through the fuckin' door. The milk stopped being delivered and he fuckin' died.