Quotes from Paul Weller

I was such a massive fan of all the '60s pop bands, but if I had to single out one band, it would definitely be The Beatles.

Going to college was never an option. I was passionate about music, but how much talent I actually had was another matter.

People say you make your best work when you're in despair and all that, and at your lowest - but for me, I think happiness makes you positive, and I think that's a good creative place to write from.

I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.

When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.

I've not had Botox, no.

I've bought clothes based on record covers. Particularly from the formative music that turned me onto it in the first place when I was a kid, with the Beatles and the Small Faces. A lot of those Sixties soul artists were in really sharp sharkskin or mohair suits, and Motown artists looked amazing.

When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do. I don't wanna get ideas above my station, but why shouldn't this be comparable? Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later, and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.

I don't really wanna talk about politics, I'm not clever enough.

No man should have cowboys boots in his wardrobe. That's fair enough, isn't it? Unless you're a cowboy, of course.

I didn't imagine getting to 50, let alone still be playing music. When I was 18, I thought it'd all be over by the time I was 21.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

I suppose I was much more serious-minded in the '70s and '80s.

When I told my mum I was going to play my first gig when I was 14, she couldn't believe it, cause I was painfully shy at that time. But I just done it, put my head down and got through it. And I suppose there's still a little bit of that, even though it's many years later and I've been doing it for a long time.

People say that if you're still angry at 52, you're not an angry young man, just a grumpy old git.

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.

I want to hear as much music as I possibly can before I leave this mortal coil but it's impossible to hear it all because there's so much of it.

I still love playing music. It was all I ever wanted to do, and I got the chance to do it.

There's such a wealth of great music, clothes or whatever. There is so much great stuff out there, that why would you not still be interested if you've grown up in that kind of culture?

I really enjoy playing America. I like the audiences there. It's the home of a lot of music I grew up with.

I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.

There have been records I've been really, really pleased with that haven't connected with people. But I felt good about them.

Getting to No. 1 makes everyone feel better; of course it does. But it's swings and roundabouts with these things. Sometimes you make a great record, and it clicks with people. And other times it passes them by; there's nothing you can do. It's still the same record.

When I was a kid in Woking, every week you went to the football dance, and every week the top kids would be wearing something different. You were constantly trying to catch up with them - which you could never do because, by the time you'd saved up enough to buy the item, they'd moved on to something else. That's the whole Mod thing, I suppose.