"I still think they're really relevant and I still think as a kind of physical and internalised hatred and dissection of humanity, it's pretty untouchable."

"I wanted to ring everyone and tell them I was number one but then I realised I didn’t have any friends."

"My daughter just delights in telling me that Ed Sheeran beats me all the time. She just keeps saying that if I was as good as Ed Sheeran I'd be happier."

"I’m not pretending the past was any good — I'm just saying the present is worse."

"God definitely created humans as the dregs, we have all the greed and the despicable acts. Humanity, worldwide, is now at its lowest ebb. Depressing, isn’t it, so let’s not get started on THAT."

"I often fantasise about going into the jungle. I’d like to go in there and be as miserable as possible and refuse to do any of the tasks and we’d all starve to death. And everyone would despise me. So on that level I quite fancy it.""

"Throughout the first year of the band I was only drinking Babycham; it’s so un-rock & roll! Then, as we were driving over the Yorkshire Dales or the Lancashire Moors, I just turned into a blubbing heap, I just wanted to go home and see my mum. I still feel like that a lot now, really.""

"There’s no problem mixing style with socialism - Fidel Castro was stylish!""

"A journalist in one of the Sunday papers called us ‘little trolls’, because we’re Welsh. Well, I’m 6ft 3in and I’m the sexiest rock star in the world."

"I could never write something like (Radiohead's) 'I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo'. I'd write something like 'I’m a cricketer, I’m boring, I’m a gardener, I'm a hoovering housewife'."

"The internet is the grandest illusion ever created. It makes people think they’re popular, they have loads of friends, they’re part of a community. And they actually have a voice. They don’t actually realise that like all of us, they’re completely fucked and powerless."

"One of the biggest corporate lies in history, up there with selling terrible mortgages."

"Not that I'd ever want one, and I fucking despise it. But why has he got a knighthood? It's Sir Nick Clegg, Head of Facebook Foreign Affairs. Can you think of a worse sentence at the moment than that?"

"Someone should build a bypass over this shithole."

"It was supposed to be a joke. As I was saying it I thought ‘This is going to be really funny’. Then this deathly silence descended on the place."

"Me and Richey can’t write music but we can write lyrics and look pretty tarty."

"It seemed a marriage made in heaven really. I found someone who believed in the same ideas as me, and was even worse musically."

"John Cale is a f*cking elitist. He did not like the people he was playing for. He's Welsh, and they're all nasty bastards."

"The viola is the saddest of all instruments."

"I learn from thinking about the future, what hasn't been done yet. That's kind of my constant obsession."

"The avant-garde makes more sense to me."

"I'm content with making records, but I don't want to be doing the same thing all the time."

"The value of having a computer, to me, is that it'll remember everything you do. It's a databank."

"If you're all loaded up on love, you haven't got anywhere else to go."

"The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn't stand the sight of the audience."

"When somebody grabs a movement, you're kind of locked into it. It's all par for the course."

"Being a living legend is such a precarious livelihood. It’s like being a bar of soap in a shower which doesn’t have any water in it."

"I use cracks on the sidewalk to walk down the street. I'd always walk on the lines. I never take anything but a calculated risk, and do it because it gives me a sense of identity. Fear is a man's best friend."

"I am a ham. I've no business being rock 'n' roll. I've said it over and over again that I'm a classical composer, dishevelling my personality by dabbling in rock 'n' roll."

"I'm bent on proving that you can make living as musician and not die young and crazy like Mozart."

"I only hope that one day John will be recognized as … the Beethoven or something of his day. He knows so much about music, he's such a great musician. He's completely mad - but that's because he's Welsh."

"John Cale is fantastic, and he made the sound of the Velvet Underground."

"Never knew whether John Cale wanted to be Elvis Presley, Frankenstein's creature or the young Chopin."

"To be universal you've got to stain the consciousness of the people. You've got to dig out a truth that everybody knows, but they don't want to hear, then tell it in a manner that's so articulate and so aesthetically indignant, so beautiful, that they've got to accept it back in their lives again. That's what I want to do. Touch something universal in your own language."