Chris Martin

I always dream about other musicians. And they’re never interested in hanging out with us. It’s like being at school and the bigger boys don’t want to play with you!

I know being on a major label is meant to be antiquated, but we’re fine with it.

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.

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.

When you’re on your fifth album, you are going to be judged against all your previous work and expectations.

I can’t believe we’ve got away with becoming this huge band. And we still haven’t done anything I think is that good yet.

I’m my worst critic and I always want to give people something better than I gave them before.

Kyle saw the things he didn’t accomplish but he could help Adam accomplish.

Because I talk so much shit they give me overcredit just to shut me up!

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.

There’s so many parts of your life, you know? People say that you don’t get any better after the age of about forty or something like that, as a performer. I find all that to be a misconception. I don’t feel bad about the way I present stuff. The calendar and the mirror – they’re bastards.

People think clowns – I wasn’t a clown. I would run parties. I basically ran around for two hours and ate massive piles of Haribo.

We’re all comedy fans in my family. My parents mainly wouldn’t let me watch stuff that was either annoying to them, or just garbage. My dad wouldn’t let us watch ‘The Flintstones’ if he was home, because he said it was a rip-off of ‘The Honeymooners’. But he would let us stay up really late in the summer and watch old ‘Honeymooners’.

I have no talent except for being able to enjoy and recognize it in others.

[On encountering the music of Umm Kulthum] I was intrigued by the scales, initially, and obviously the vocal work. The way she sang, the way she could hold a note, you could feel the tension, you could tell that everybody, the whole orchestra, would hold a note until she wanted to change.

It’s VH1, it’s everywhere, and you know music is just the world right now. People love music.

It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was ‘all you need is Love.’ This year, it’s ‘all you need is Love and peace, baby.’ Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You’re all geniuses, and you’re all beautiful. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you’ll get it as soon as you like.

I didn’t really have any idea of what Hollywood was except that it was a place where the made movies.

If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.

I don’t care what I look like; it’s how people think of me. I do care how people think of me. I want people to say, ‘Oh, she’s nice,’ rather than, ‘Oh, she’s so pretty.’

No matter what we say, entertainers are usually quite insecure, wobbly characters underneath, and maybe that bit of glory or that bit of expression or whatever it is compensates in some area.