Alex Kapranos

Boredom or being sick of what you've done before is a big part of being in a band.

Although they might not admit it, I think girls are very aware of the impact that they're having. But they never feel it themselves, and it's impossible to explain. It's like trying to tell a blind person what yellow is.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

It's very rare that a song falls from your mind complete.

Maybe 'Can't Stop Feeling' and 'Turn It On' we'll just release as singles. It's a thing The Beatles used to do which I really loved, the idea of releasing something as a single completely on its own.

A lot of food criticism has a similar flavor to it, and I'm probably going to write about it in a different way.

It's easy to be lazy when there's food lying around backstage or there's a fast-food joint a couple blocks away. But if you walk a little further, ask around a bit, of course there are exciting things to discover.

Boho to me is a first-year student who's just discovered the tie-dye shop.

Ambition is sneered at by some bands. It seems like a pretty good thing to me.

I want to make music that will make the blood surge in your veins, music that will get people up and dance.

Cinema, which is influenced by every single part of life, is direct and reaches you immediately. And writing - the best writing is complex ideas communicated concisely. And music - if it's a good tune, make sure people can bloody hear it.

No matter what you do, if you're trying to create something new, your environment has a massive impact on you.

Men behave very oddly in the company of attractive women.

I'm not a food critic, and I'm not really an authority to write anything on food.

Just because you can leap off a drum kit doing a scissors kick while hitting a chord, people expect you to be an extrovert socially. But I'm not always comfortable with the idea of small talk at a party.

I really want it to have an impact on the world. I want to be in a town on the other side of the world, and somebody walks up and says, 'That music you made in Glasgow, I listened to it every day, and it moved me.'

There's a character that I play onstage, and I can't let him loose in the supermarket when I'm buying my beans on toast.

Surely every band wants to be a pivotal point in history.

Arty. To me the word's got as much venom associated with it as 'wacky'.

Being in a band didn't buy me my beans on toast!

It doesn't matter how adventurous you want to be, you've still got to contain your identity.

There's a difference between expectations and aspirations.

Of course, there's a certain type of person who feels that anything which becomes mainstream has to be rejected immediately. And that's part of the indie-alternative snobbery and hierarchy and elitism.

I think in the world of indie music there's this sort of false modesty.

Why play a chord when you can play one note?

Ideally, musicians belong outside the Establishment. When they cross that line, it's like something in them has died.