Quotes from Richard Ashcroft

If you really, truly believe in something, you're on fire, and your tongue rolls at the same pace.

I've had tons of incredible conversations with people who say they got married or buried relatives to my songs.

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

George Best was my idol. I got a chance to meet him once.

Don't expect me to be some indie schmindie embarrassed about my success.

I want to entertain and inspire.

Criticism is beyond your control and is a collective group of people deciding things about you that may or may not be true. Some critics look for more when there's no need to. They have a dotto-dot picture of me they are intent on filling in.

If Sinatra had packed in his style because there were a load of counterfeit Sinatras about, he would have stopped singing in 1956 or whatever.

We all have our daily prescription of yoga, football, religion, or whatever gets us through that day. My thing is music. It's the only thing that gives me a sense of calm and balance. It's the thing I know I'm good at.

The Grime guys have kind of rewritten the blueprint for people as far as creativity, songwriting, ownership, doing your own videos... So they're sending out a real positive message I think to people, that you can do it yourself in a punk way, and you can still potentially be successful and get to people.

It's difficult to be the spokesperson for something that internally is falling apart. That's a tremendous amount of pressure to put on one person, to be the guy who gives all the quotes, all the interviews.

You look at the Blur comeback, it was so smooth - so smooth - compared to The Verve.

People wanted me to become this cliched Keith Richards, Iggy Pop character. I wasn't expected to marry a beautiful wife and have kids.

Just because something's kinda indie and whatever and only a few people know it, it doesn't give it more authenticity over Rihanna's 'Work' work work.

'Bitter Sweet Symphony' is one of the greatest pieces of modern art created by anyone. I'm not blowing my own trumpet here.

Some people have a God because they need faith, and that's fair enough.

Pop music might seem banal and simple to some people, but it's what it expresses that counts.

I'm totally up for experimental music. I'm up for music that they don't play on the radio, and I take in all of it. But my thing, the thing that comes most natural to me, is making the stuff that has a melody; it has a soul to it, yet it's head music.

I'm not driven by fame or success. I'm quite a shy, introverted person, and I could easily melt away into the background.

You can radically change a person's life with a tune. I don't think people truly understand or appreciate how powerful that is.

Hearing 'This Is How It Feels' on the radio was an amazing feeling, like starting again. But I believe that, in the end, my name will be bigger then the Verve because of all those great tunes and the power of what I stand for.

We'd lie on the floor, turn the lights out, put two speakers on either side of our ears, and try to blow our minds with music. I know that I want to make a record that does that yet a record that, if it was played on the radio at twelve in the afternoon, the guy making the wall - the guy cleaning the motorway - he's got a melody to hang on.

I think I was born to be a songwriter.

The mad thing is, most of my life, when I'm not in a dark mood, it's been humour that's got me through. The only way to get through this business is by laughing.