I can't do all that riddly diddly stuff. I'm not good enough. It's all about not playing.

A lot of the time there is a lot of melancholy in the lyrics.

Coldplay are just four friends trying to make great music.

I can't do all that riddly diddly stuff. I'm not good enough. It's all about not playing.

We're also passionate about music and very critical about the music that we listen to.

Two weeks later, we played our first concert and had 100 people there. It was pretty cool.

The first time we all played as a band, I think it was in January 1998, in Jonny's bedroom.

At the end of the day, we're just trying to prevent each other from going mad.

I think hopefully we've got enough brain cells left to decide if our music is really worth something.

Optimism is the key.

When you write something it has to hit the level that you accept as being good.

My grandmother did all the cooking at Christmas. We ate fattened chicken. We would feed it even more so it would be big and fat.

I also surround myself with people who make me laugh. If I'm not laughing, it upsets my day.

I was obsessed with the Canadian novel 'Anne of Green Gables'. I decided I was Anne of Green Gables. There was something that spoke to me about her, and I wanted to have her beautiful red hair.

Believe it or not, but I was a camp councilor for three years. I love kids.

The concept that you cannot own the airwaves has caused far more harm than good.

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

It's only a hitch when you're in a slump. When you're hitting the ball its called rhythm.

A person sets out to write a poem for a variety of reasons: to win the heart of his beloved; to express his attitude toward the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state; to capture his state of mind at a given instant; to leave - as he thinks at that moment - a trace on the earth.

I'm inspired by looking at art, by looking at precedent. Looking is what you have to do if you want to make things, so you develop a critical eye.

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains.

But the egoist has no ideals, for the knowledge that his ideals are only his ideals, frees him from their domination. He acts for his own interest, not for the interest of ideals.

Buy tabloids. Celebrity gossip is engrossing. Celebrity cellulite can make you forget turbulence.

Don't you know this, that words are doctors to a diseased temperment?

I like to dress pretty basic during the day, but with a sophisticated bohemian spin, and sometimes a little rock chic. At night I like to go glamorous.

I like doing small parts, because I don't feel I'm that practised in acting. It's like making baby steps towards a bigger goal.

Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

An artist cannot be responsible for what people make of their art. An audience loathe giving up preconceived images of an artist.

I always felt as a horn player, a jam session wasn't satisfying enough for me. I should have been a rhythm section player, actually.

Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.

In Madrid, there's a big street in the centre called Callao. I remember being there with my mum and pointing to one of the big film posters and saying, 'I want to be up there.' That was my dream, and I got it.

When you're a kid, you want to be a millionaire.

With the strong women I write about, I want to create a sense of strong possibilities.

If someone is lying to you, they'll generally look up to the top right. That means that they're trying to construct an image that doesn't exist.