John Cooper Clarke Quotes

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.

I was met with the poet’s greatest enemy; indifference.

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

Never leave a bookies with a smile on your face.

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'.

[Johnny Cash] was in and out with a caution; I had a residential thing going on for Her Majesty's pleasure. So I missed a golden opportunity there while the man in black was still alive, I could have gone up to him and said, 'Eh Johnny, get over it! Some of us have done some serious bird'.

I was arrested on the flimsiest of evidence. I was occupying the driver's seat of a car that didn't belong to me.

...she took us out on a motor ride to a beach, it was a nudist camp.....What those people do on their time off is their own business, the dirty bastards.

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.

A suit where I can fall down drunk in a ditch get up the next morning and go on to a wedding; or more likely a funeral at my time of life. I could go to six a week but no man can live on vol-au-vents alone.

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

As is often the case a failed marriage led to a successful divorce. We split the house; I got the outside...... It was at that point where I made a promise to myself, I said I'm not going to get married again, I'm just gonna find a woman I don't like and give her everything.

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.

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.

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