Quotes from Ian Brown

People in Russia learned English off the Beatles. People in Japan learned English off the Stone Roses. Noel Gallagher says music can't change the world, but the Roses made him want to start a group, so it changed his world.

I've not thought about the Stone Roses since we quit. How many LPs do I have to make to stop people talking about it?

If I was in the gutter, and my kids lived on the kerb, I'd go and get a job in B&Q before I'd reform the Roses. I gave everything I had to the Stone Roses and ended up hitting a brick wall. I'm never going to give anyone a foothold on that wall again.

By 1993, the Stone Roses had become this huge, beautiful cruise ship just floating about in the middle of nowhere with no captain.

I see The Stone Roses in '89 as Technicolor: we were all about joy and possibilities of life.

With the Stone Roses, I always thought we'd be successful because we had some great songs.

When The Stone Roses first came out, the early reviews called me 'simian.' I had to look that up at the time.

I'm only really good at making music. I wasn't convinced when I started out, but then I heard the first Stone Roses' LP.

It is a fact that everyone's got a limited run in music - but who's to say how long that run lasts? I used to think that there would be no way I'd still be in music when I was 40. I used to think anyone who was 40 was an old man, and they probably shouldn't be doing it anymore.

I'd like to change the world. Eradicate poverty, racism, and sexism... all the usual things.

I was skint, and I had to move back to my mum and dad's house, back into the room I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I kept getting people on the streets telling me that they loved me; it didn't mean anything to me because I was still borrowing tenners off my pensioner father to go and get some chicken.

Hell is being stuck in a lift with Elton John and the Queen Mother.

Everything I've ever achieved, I've done on my terms.

I understand how insubstantial this seems, how minor: man buys a coffee in French! But it was Gégé and Jean-Claude, and my own Walker, who reminded me how to do that simpest thing. They reminded me not to be ashamed. That is never a small accomplishment.

I sketched a picture of Jean-Claude in my notebook; he saw me, so I showed it to him. He erupted in pleasure. It seemed I'd found a way into his trust and his company—into his world. It was easier to do this with the residents than I had imagined. There were not rules, no prescribed routes: you went with what was available, with the most human thing you could catch on to.

Le Cardinal's conclusion suprised him. L'Arche produced a collective intelligence that was greater than the sum of its parts; interaction between the able and the disabled produced points of view that were more sophisticated than either group reported on its own.

22 toe touches • 16 sit-ups • 23 leg lifts, lying on my front • 15 push-ups • 440 running-on-the-spot steps, each 4 inches high, with 10 stride jumps every 75 steps You do all this in 9.5 minutes.

I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.

I was jailed for using words that I still dispute. Anyone who's ever met me will tell you that I'm not a violent person.

I'd love to see the world without liquor for a week.

I feel like I've established myself as a music maker in my own right.

I'm lucky enough to be one of them music makers who can do a dance festie or a rock festie.

You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.

In March 1977, I taped the single 'Career Opportunities' off Piccadilly Radio, which was the '70s equivalent of downloading, and then the album came out in April 1977.