Chris Martin

I don’t speak particularly well. That’s one of the consequences of being extremely ugly.

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you’re singing it from someone else’s angle. But it’s always from me. It’s just a new way of framing it.

There’s a reason why people who’ve had bad relationships with their parents listen to angry stuff.

I think we’re a band with a lot of history now so it’s nice to come up with something that doesn’t have any history at all.

The goal is to try and make the perfect song. Which of course will never happen.

I think that the fact that a relationship becomes public is a bit of a bummer. Because it can distract from the real reason why you’re together, which is that you just like each other.

(While accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting) Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession like welding.’

[on quitting smoking] I quit smoking four months ago and since then I have been biting-chewing-fidgeting with anything that isn’t nailed down. I quit cold turkey. I was up to two packs a day, I’m coughing, my eyes are red, I don’t have energy, I’m not even enjoying it, so I just said, ‘That’s it.’ I think it might’ve been easier if I went with Nicorette or one of those supplements, but I just don’t get that. Let’s see, I’m addicted to something, so I know! Let’s pop some pills to get over it! Yeah, that makes sense. But now I find myself in conversations where people are looking at me and I’m salivating all over myself. This is how pathetic and sad it is: you start thinking, ‘Who am I without a cigarette in my hand?’

I did (training in) tennis, ballet, swing dancing, piano, art class and etiquette. I also did French dialect, but then it was mixing me up with my Southern dialect, so we stuck to Southern!

I think maybe we (Queen) were subconsciously influenced by The Beatles’ albums, I think really, especially the later ones, like Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road. They were very eclectic albums.

Doing one movie every two years is about all I can handle ’cause, being the creator at ’30 Rock’, my year there starts in the middle of June and goes back around until March.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am all about money. I mean, just look how well my line of zodiac-inspired toe rings and homeopathic children’s medications are selling on Home Shopping Network.

As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.

I watch my contemporaries, and they love to live in the studio and I don’t. I have a life. I treat it as a 9-to-5. I try to create something new every day, and then I get on with my life.

There aren’t any hard women, only soft men.

I might get mad all over again watching our premiere.

Say Yes. You’ll figure it out afterward.

[on animals] When I see a toreador in a bullfight getting gored I think: ‘Good, you shouldn’t be in there’. What is the pleasure in seeing an animal speared to death? It’s the same with fox hunting. They’re just psychopaths. I think I’ll end up doing something with animals – running a sanctuary or something.

To me, they are equally important, as they represent a certain period in my life and times. With that in mind, it really is impossible to pick favorites.

Thats the worst thing, I dont really care if people say I’m a bad actor, I can like work on that, but if they just say that he’s ugly thats just like “oh.. really?”

When humor works, it works because it’s clarifying what people already feel. It has to come from someplace real. You don’t just decide to destroy a person by making up stuff, and no one at SNL is writing to go after someone.