Quotes from Richard Ashcroft

80% of everything I've experienced since the Verve has been depressing.

When I read about Gram Parsons' dream of this Cosmic American Music when I was in my late teens, that stuck with me: that idea, that ambition, to draw off the roots of music but take it somewhere fresh.

I am a family man, and I have children.

There's a track called 'Why Not Nothing' about how the world's turning so conservative and so religious at the same time. I think it's up to the songwriters to give another side to the coin, and my music does that.

My thing is, I've yet to meet a well person. The spectrum is unbelievably wide, the triggers for depression and manic depression.

The greatest footballers take the sport into the world of art, of performance.

I'm not one of those freaks who can't see anything past 1977.

Of course, fatherhood fundamentally changes a lot of your life, but it enriches you, too.

Other kids would be playing with their Action Man, and I was questioning life and society.

I've got kids now; it changes you radically.

I don't think I have enough German blood in me to get into the royal family.

I'm a naturally gifted left-footed footballer.

I'm very interested in Darwinism and how that affects us on a day-to-day level. But I also have a deep interest in theology and the spiritual.

Creativity, for me, is almost like therapy; my songs take you into the underbelly of my mind, and there's some dark stuff in there.

Without music and creativity, I'd need other forms of therapy. But for me, the life process is the process of healing yourself. 'Break the Night' is about offering hope to people, about breaking through the darkness.

Ultimately, if someone's paying hard-earned money to see me play live, they don't want a rant about what's happening on the other side of the world. They don't want to know which way they should vote.

Obviously, aging has a certain amount of mellowing process because there's certain things you realise you were doing when you were younger that were plain ridiculous, stupid.

I have never had a bad review off a good-looking person.

Life's about ego. So for someone to talk about my ego, as they are writing their piece about my ego, I'm wondering what they're doing with their ego?

At The Verve's first-ever gig, I said that we were gonna blow this local band off the stage. It was only in the local Wigan paper, and they rang me to ask why I was being so aggressive. I just went, 'Hey man, it's like boxing. I'm just trying to sell a ticket.'

If you start shaping everything you do trying to be in step with whatever is going on in the world, you're often out of step by the time people hear it. It's a bit like fashion.

A classic song is timeless. You'll never outlive a classic song. I'll never put The Beatles 'In My Life' on one day and say, 'That doesnt move me any more.'

You can find the greatest sound of all time, and someone's going to squash it down to a tiny little earphone anyway or play it through the computer, and that is a big thing people have to think about now.

Really, I listen to more hip hop probably than most other things. That's where I get a lot of my influence from because it's so eclectic. So that's what I love.