Chris Martin

Well, I don’t like the word ‘rock star,’ the two words, ‘rock star.’ Not even ‘soft rock star’. Not even limestone star. I don’t like those words.

I’m just a public-schoolboy. I’ve got a degree. I’m from a middle-class family in Devon. I’ve got no story.

Everyone asks me about being so worried or thinking about existence as if I’m the only person who can’t understand why a tree grows the way it does or why a person is in power when they’re not that great. These are questions everyone has.

Before our albums are released I feel like we still own it, that we have control over our music. But once it’s out there in the world it’s no longer ours.

Maybe it’s because I’m English, but in terms of how people perceive us I only pick up on the negative side of it.

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

I’ve watched the Emmys for almost my whole life, so it was crazy to finally be there in the audience clapping and actually going on stage. Hopefully one day I’ll get to be actually nominated.

Elections: the only excuse for a grown man to kiss a stranger’s baby and not have the cops called.

[To a psychedelic rock sextet call Strawberry Alarm Clock] We’re going to get you six Ed Sullivan shows and we’re going to get you on Janis Joplin’s next tour. [After the meeting on being told by Schiffman ‘David, what are you doing? Six Ed Sullivan shows? Are you kidding? Janis Joplin wouldn’t piss on these people! We are not going to give them any Janis Joplin dates’] If they have another hit, we’ll get them one Ed Sullivan show, and we’ll get them a couple of dates on somebody else’s tour. I don’t care. And if they don’t have another hit, well, f*ck ’em.

We (pop stars) are people not androids. We’ve got views. I’ve got opinions and I don’t see why I shouldn’t use a bit of my art to put them over. I think music is one of the most powerful media forces in the world today.

I was thinking about why I make movies, and I know why. Life is hard. It’s nice to go escape and have a good time at the movies. If I can give people a movie about hope, love and the future, then I’ve done my job.

When you’re thirty-five, you can’t take as much booze … and I always got a little violent on drink…So it was kind of self-destructive suicide side of me, which is resolving itself for the better, I believe, because I never enjoyed it…

Everybody has forgotten about showmanship. People don’t look like rock stars any more. They just look like regular dudes off the street.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

I always choose roles that are, you know, hopefully different from the last role. I don’t wanna do the same thing over and over again because that’s, well, first of all that’s no fun.

It may become Bob as time goes on. My dad was a Bob and his father was a Bob. That seems to be the sort of cheery thing that you do to octogenarians, but not yet, no.

This industry’s very fickle, you’re only as big as your last record, you know? And we intend on releasing some good records yet, so we don’t intend on going anywhere.

There’s probably not a crew chief out there who hasn’t tried something that seemed like a good idea.

A rivalry doesn’t happen in one or two races or in one year. It happens over a period of time to really get a rivalry going. We race together three or four races and get to beating on each other, that’s not a rivalry, that’s just a happening. You do that four or fives years, that’s a rivalry.

They (Barnes Theatre Club) were a very good group, and for some reason when I finished the backstage thing, I just decided to that I should try to act. So I auditioned for Guys and Dolls and got a little tiny part as some Cuban dancer or something and then in the next play I got the lead part, and then I got my agent. So I owe everything to that little club.

I certainly didn’t want to date. I was through with guys.