"I haven`t listened to English music for the last year or so. It`s so...mainstream."
"Pop people are defects. Pop people are funny in the head and the more pop they get, the funnier their heads become. Pop begins in bedrooms and ends up in supermarkets."
"I can`t dance properly but I like jumping around, it`s like getting electric shocks or spasms."
" I don`t think you`d have Suede without Blur. Well, I know you wouldn`t"
"How can you be happy of winning some millions in the lottery? I`ve worked hard to get rich."
"It`s weird because with the guys it`s not a love thing, it`s more of a "let`s be mates, let`s get on stage and, woargh, nice one!" sort of thing. It`s funny, I really love that. If that`s as far as I ever get in communicating with people, that`s great. I just like the idea of everyone cuddling each other."
"It is very cold here on Iceland parts of the year, but I know several ways to keep warm. :)"
"Country House is about me imagining I`m going mad. Which I did a bit last year."
"Well, no we have never been a druggy band. I mean, I`ve taken a bit of cocaine. Everyone I know in the music buisness has taken cocaine."
"I was always a workaholic, but I just didn`t have any work."
"If we came from America, we would`ve been the biggest band in the world."
"I love dogs, but I couldn`t eat a whole one. Ha ha."
"Alex writes a song every two years, and they`ll all about planets."
"My ego is the worst thing about me."
"We` ve got one rule, and that is don`t drink before you play a gig, don`t do anything before you play a gig."
"I used to go to loads of parties and when I would get there Graham would be lying on the floor like a human doormat."
"In the sixties people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, people take Prozac to make it normal."
"You know. It`s just work, work, work to hard. Then you go bananas and end up in country houses."
"I can`t stand the idea of being a sad, lonely, bedsit poet. I`d much rather be perceived as loud and arrogant."
"The thing you`ve got to understand about Blur is that there`s not an ounce of rock`n`roll in us. Not any."
"I don`t think we`ll ever break America because the chemistry in the band isn`t such that it can work in America. I mean Graham is hopeless when it comes to long touring. He`s delicate at the best of times, but put him on tour for three months and he goes bananas."
All the things we were into then are definitely still with us, but it goes much deeper than that. I mean, Graham's exactly the same now as when I first met him. He looks the same, cares about the same things.
I wasn't depressed at all when I was younger. I was exceptionally happy, but I was seen as being odd. I didn't want to be different, but I was. There's quite a subtle difference between wanting to be odd and actually being odd. I was always a workaholic, but I just didn't have any work.
I couldn't fit in with the lads at school. I was the weirdo. Post-stroke-gay. I always got called gay.
While we were in the States, we discovered that all the money we'd made from "Leisure" - which wasn't millions, but quite a reasonable amount - had "disappeared". We'd worked as hard as people like Ride or The Charlatans, but we hadn't seen anything. We literally had no money; we couldn't even pay our rent, and it got to the stage where it was touch and go whether or not we'd go bankrupt.
There was a time when any pop star who even admitted to enjoying books was dismissed as a middle-class twat. They've virtually given up on calling me a middle-class twat now because I've actually admitted, "Yes, I am a middle-class twat" about a million times, so they've given up now!
I've got people camping outside my place in Kensington. In sleeping bags. It's not that irritating, except we haven't got any curtains in the front room, so we can't walk round in the nude.
The Who was the main influence in the early days. That and Mike Leigh films. Graham had a Who video and a Mike Leigh video and that's all we watched. That's all you need...(That and biscuits and tea! - Graham).
We've never taken a break between albums. Two weeks off seems like a long time to us, we just want to get back to work.
I am rich. I fucking am. There's no point denying it.
Everyone is taking drugs, apart from Graham and me. We are virtually the only exception in the entire scene.
We've always seen ourselves as putting on white coats and going into the lab.
Musically we are very good. Very good. Graham and Dave are excellent musicians, I'm pretty good and Alex isn't really that good but he's getting better all the time...
I've always had a bit of a Malcolm McDowell fixation.
We sing about this country and how we feel about it. We tell stories.
What do we stand for? So we don't lie down all the time!
It's not me saying, "This is how it's going to be guys". I finish writing the songs, and then Graham takes over and makes them Psychedelic.
Everyone, wherever they are in the world knows what la la la means.
Because "Country House" has that sort of video, immediately the song is judged in that way. I think we did the wrong kind of video. I can't hold my hands on my heart and say it was good art.
I wouldn't bother if I didn't think we were the best band in the universe.
Some bands really think they've done well, but we've never felt like that.
I'm not interested in that live-young-die-fast ideal. We're anti that notion of "authenticity". The only truly authentic people are covers bands.
Graham has obsessions. At the moment it's American hardcore. They last from six to eight months, and it's very hard for him to see anything else.
The thing you've got to understand about Blur is that there's not an ounce of rock'n'roll in us. Not any. That's why we're capable of making an album a year instead of standing around in a studio with the amps turned on waiting for the vibes. There's so much else to do.
Not liking Guns'N'Roses is like not liking Madonna or like trying to stop the world going around. Whatever we say....it won't make any difference.
We're miles better than spokesmen anyway. They're all wankers. We're a band without a manifesto.
You can tell everything about a hotel room from what sort of Corby trouser press it's got. If it's got a wall-mounted Formica 2000, then forget it. But if it's a free-standing 3000 with electric timer, then you're there, you've made it.
This particular strain of "flu" is due to the fact that the Chinese farm their pigs alongside their ducks. (Shut up, you bollocker! -Graham)
Seymour was the more radical, non-bite sized, unfriendly face of Blur.
When we signed to Food Records as Seymour, one of the conditions was that we changed our name.
Graham and I soon discovered that we had loads in common, including a love of booze and guitars.
Shoegazing was a term invented by Andy Ross to describe all the bands that we weren't. They were shoegazers. That's precisely what we weren't. Then we went to France and there were all these questions about shoegazers.
The Pixies are the last great American band. They piss on Nirvana.
Playing with R.E.M. is like playing with U2...you never know what they're going to do.
Stars are back, that's for sure. There hasn't been a star drummer or a star bass player or even a star guitarist for years but I think that's all coming back.
Everyone who's in a band thinks they're in the best band in the world. That's only natural. But when other people start telling you you're the best band in the world as well, you just go...super nova confident!
Rock'n'roll's got a lot to do with rebellion. And the first thing you rebel against is your parents. Did you ever start to just emulate everything they thought was shit?
The best thing about being in a band is that you can allow your insanities to develop. And get paid for it.
We're just boozers, really. It's as bad as anything else, but you get spared the claptrap. It's a good pop drug.
We do generally go for glamorous forty-something actresses. I find Germaine Greer terrifically sexy. She's a gardener too, which is quite a sensual hobby.
I'm the George Harrison of the group. I don't do backing vocals because I prefer to look cool and smoke a fag.
I was learning to speak French during the days in 1989, Graham was putting telephones in washing up-bowls and Dave was driving a brown Ford Escort estate around Colchester and working for the council.
We are all white, middle class and earning a living doing what we want to do. But we are aware how privileged we are, and that's why everything comes across as being so blank. It's pathetic really, all of us constantly shoving chemicals down our throats and saying how much we love each other. But that's how we are.
Life's a sauna, and then you have a shower.
"The first time I met Damon. he completely pissed me off. His music sounded like Brother Beyond."
"Touring`s a dream. You don`t have to pay for anything, you go to a different place everyday, everywhere you go you get beer and drugs free, girls scream at you and you feel...sh*t actually, most of the time."
"We`ve have always been too friendly and too good-looking for some people."
"There`s no mystery about why we`ve got so much better. We work hard. Very few bands work as hard as we do, and if you work very hard you will get better. I don`t think it`s about being clever. Academic cleverness doesn`t really come into pop music."
Damon? Sexy? He's about as sexy as a stuffed fish, pal.
I hate the video for "Country House". I love the song, but the association with it has become Page Three and Benny Hill instead of Blur.
The first thing Damon ever said to me was that his shoes were more expensive than mine. Eventually he went off to work in drama school in London.
I used to go around and see him and he'd play me this weird stuff that was just endless piano, with no singing at all. It was just nuts. [on Damon]
We used to hang around the music block, mainly because that was where the lads never went. They'd be off on the field playing football and beating people up. I suppose we were the school freaks in a way but we never had long hair, nothing like that.
We're quite strict about being musically correct, using the right chords.
I play a Gibson Les Paul guitar live because it's reliable, powerful, strong enough and heavy enough to work really well and survive.
The Englishness that we celebrate isn't real Englishness. It's an imaginary Englishness. It's kind of halfway between a piss-take and serious disillusion.
Graham fans seem to be really fucking mad. Alex fans just seem to be mad. The classic fanbase of people that like Damon are completely fine. I just seem to attract complete nutters.
I think it's better if blokes can admit that they can have crushes on other blokes. I've probably had crushes but never really sexual crushes on men.
Most of America doesn't even listen to music probably. They just go racoon hunting or something.
For the backwards guitar in "Sing" I sat down and worked the whole song out backwards, turned the tape over and played it live. It's a fucking complicated way. We're very organic about that though. I won't have things sampled, then they flip it on the computer - I much prefer to do it live.
Making new music with ourselves is the most rewarding thing, the most fun thing, and the most difficult.
You think it's a bit Madness and a bit Beatles? Maybe you're right. There's certainly something in it that pulls you in. There's two things going on at the same time. It sounds really simple, but it's not the sort of thing that anyone could do. Blur songs aren't as straightforward as everyone thinks. [on Country House]
I think I just got off his total mad-headedness. [on Damon]
We used to drink so much. I'd have a bottle of wine under the chair my amp was sat on, and I'd swig my way through that.
Jack Daniels makes us all puke.
I don't feel famous at all. I've noticed it, and I suppose it's become an effort to be unfamous. It's crude, but the idea I have of myself is of someone who's getting pints of milk on the corner in the morning.
On the Japanese version of the Parklife CD, the dog's eyes light and when you open it...it BARKS!
I remember we came back from America and suddenly Suede were everywhere and we were crap. That was weird. I went down the Underworld and no one wanted to talk to me. I was yesterday's guitar man. And it mattered! We don't like people stealing our thunder! We tend to think that we've earned a right to a certain amount. It's that simple. And we're very affronted when we're ignored.
Japanese audiences dye their hair blond, dress in Adidas zip-ups and Fred Perry tops - and then they put on ties as well. It's very strange.
There's no emotional stability. I should be enjoying myself but I just get uptight. I just seem to be getting...angrier.
Even people who hated us would come rushing up and say "What was that song?" [about "Sing"]
We're very dissatisfied with anything that isn't slightly...twisted. I like people like John Lennon who are stars in a totally anti-star way.
"I hate the video for`Country House`. I love the song, but the association with it has become Page Three and Benny Hill instead of Blur."
"You become totally aware of your every action. It`s a very weird thing not to be able to walk to the shops without thinking of yourself as the guitarist in Blur walking to the shops."
"Damon wasn`t liked at school and I thought he was a vain wanker."
"When we finish one album, we immediately start thinking of the next one."
"We don`t eat anything with eyes, except potatoes."
"It`s interesting that all of us have got one sister and none of us have brothers. And we do look after each other like brothers."
"We generally pay people to order other people around now."
It got to the point on our interminable US tour where one morning we all had a black eye. Within a three-day period, we'd all managed to twat each other.
I was a part-time agit-prop-Marxist-red-flag-squat-punk with a blonde Mohican.
My sister's called Sarah. And she's ace. Nothing to add.
Brian Johnston used to make my sundays. He was the last of the old school of sports commentators. I used to watch the cricket on the telly with the sound down, just so that I could have the radio on with his beautiful voice.
It's only recently that I think we've really cared whether the people in America really care about us or not. We spent so much time arguing with our record company over there because they didn't seem to get what we were doing at all. We've changed to Virgin there now and the people we're dealing with seem all right.
But being in a band isn't all I could do. I could've earned a pretty good living out of being a computer programmer. I'm equally good at that as I am at this.
Oh dear, I think we're going to claim we've invented everything again.