John Cooper Clarke
17 quotes
Biography
John Cooper Clarke, also known as JCC and "The Bard of Salford", is an English performance poet and comedian who was often referred to as a "punk poet" in the late 1970s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he released several albums and performed on stage with punk and post-punk bands and has continued to write and perform since.
"You can count on him. He'll always let you down."
"Do not go mental, and with that, goodnight."
"Drugs eh! That's the trouble; they're indiscriminate. The good memories go with the fuckin' shit you're tryin' to block out."
"Not only do I not have a mobile 'phone, I haven't got a computer. I don't employ any artificial intelligence of any kind. People say to me, "Oh, you should have a computer, they can do this...." I say "Look, I know how fuckin' great they are. That's why, that's the very reason I can't have one." You know I'll just watch a bit of Dion and the Belmonts, then I'll go out...oh, no, what was that Elvis film....oh that reminds me, that Grace Kelly movie...I'll just download this Marx Brothers' clip. You know what I mean, I'd never get out of the fuckin' house. I'd fuckin' die. You'd find me dead with a pizza box with mi arse in the air and mi pants round mi ankles in front of a flickerin' fuckin' computer screen. He never went out when we bought him that computer, he never went out again, he never went through the fuckin' door. The milk stopped being delivered and he fuckin' died."
"Never leave a bookies with a smile on your face."
"It was quite a tough school. Put it this way, we had our own coroner."
"I was met with the poet’s greatest enemy; indifference."
"My advice to any poet; you have to be idle to write it. A pen, a notebook and idleness, those are the three requisites for the manufacture of poetry."
"[Luxury item] A boulder of opium twice the size of my own head."
"All my life, all I wanted to be was a professional poet. To me being a professional poet was better than notching up a hat trick at Old Trafford.....You get to wear fine clothes and perfume and nobody pulls you up on it. You get out of bed late in the day and nobody calls you a lazy bastard. A state of reverie and the virtue of idleness are paramount. Any poet will tell you this."
"My paternal grandfather, George, had been a regular soldier in India until chucking-out time in 1948, and funnily enough bore an uncanny resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi (who apparently suffered from corns and bad breath, in other words a supercallousedfragilemysticplaguedwithhalitosis, as Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke almost sang)."
"Have I seen Schindler's List? I was on Schindler's list - Dr Schindler my dentist that is."
"[on the fear of a nervous breakdown] I don't think I ever lost this fear. It turned me into a default existentialist by the time I was six: I quickly learned that the pursuit of happiness is largely pointless, happiness being the only target one merely has to aim at in order to miss."
"[on his Dad] He didn't share the general public's dim view of the late Joseph Stalin."
"This guy was going to marmalise me! I mean, where's the kudos in beating up a seven-stone fucking consumptive? I was a self-confessed coward, then as now. My coat of arms has been detailed elsewhere: four white feathers on a field of yellow. Nothing for me is more terrifying than physical pain...."
"Here he is. All the way from Salford. He's not my cup of tea but you might like him."
"One of the things that is his inability to contact him. He's never had a 'phone. And before the days when mobile 'phones were popular you had to 'phone his mam....."