Jarvis Cocker Quotes

As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield, I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn't actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course, as we all know from fairy stories, when you achieve that ambition, you find out you don't want it.

You don't often hear people say, 'Oh, since he's been taking them drugs, he's such a nice person! He's really come out of his shell, he's really nice, he's blossomed'.

Culture shouldn't be a pacifying thing.

It shouldn't be something that you just passively accept. I think it should be something that, in some ways, is quite disruptive - makes you think and question things, and actually sparks debate.

I think life is more interesting when everybody's jumbled up together.

When people separate out into cliques and things, it's okay, but it's a bit limiting. You can always learn things from other people. This is my theory.

I'd never really wanted to have a really 'private' life before.

But when somebody starts delving into it and printing details through the tabloids for shagging people you shouldn't have shagged, then that probably made me shy away a bit more from giving too much away.

I think basically becoming famous has taken the place of going to Heaven in modern society, hasn't it? That's the place where your dreams will come true. It's an act of faith now; they think that's going to sort things out.

I'd been thinking I'd have to learn how to play really well, but obviously the message of punk was that you just learn three chords in a week and you're away.

I used to look at older people who bothered to still attend nightclubs and couldn't help but wonder why. Didn't they realise how foolish they looked? Of course, now that I'm one of those people myself, I have decided that such rules don't apply to me.

I got a pair of red, synthetic satin women's pants through the post the other day with a phone number on. That was quite strange. I haven't tried the phone number. In times of stress I may.

Part of why I started a band was due to feelings of shyness and social ineptitude. I saw it as some way of being able to interact with people from a safe distance.

Hawkwind are one of those bands that people introduce you to because you don't see them on the covers of magazines. I'd heard 'Silver Machine' but Russell Senior, who was in Pulp, got me into them. They had a song called 'Master Of The Universe' and we nicked the title in 1985 for one of our songs.

I'm a sluggish character; I'm a bit slow. For some reason I find it hard to work quickly.

There seems to be a contradiction in the fact that there's more music around and more channels or downloading music or more channels on TV, and yet at the same time, in some ways it doesn't seem to be as vital as it once was. It seems to be just another entertainment option or lifestyle enhancement aid or something.

I love the Internet, but it's hard not to get lost in it.

It's not like a book where you start and get to the end. It's like we've found a way to encapsulate all of human knowledge within one thing only to learn that you can't do that. It's an overabundance of information.

Being chronically shy I needed to create a persona for myself and be involved with a band where I could be ruler of my own kingdom. Then Pulp became hugely popular and I lost control of it, which is when it all went wrong.

One of the problems of our modern world is that there's a lot of things to work through, but, at some point, everybody should take a pause from that and make something, so that it's not just all one-way traffic.

You know when you're thinking about what you want to be when you grow up, or how you want your life to pan out. I couldn't imagine anything better than living in a hotel so you'd never have to worry about washing up, making the bed, anything like that, and having a servant to come in and play all your favourite TV programmes.

Pornography takes all the reality out of sex and Disney does that to family life.

People who make good music aren't necessarily nice people.

I think that's what all art is for - for people to express what it is to be human. That's the purpose of it.

You have to create a bespoke cultural environment.

I know this may be a kind of thing that an old person says, but I feel to quite a large extent I was reared by the TV I watched.

I recently spent quite a bit of time in Sheffield, England, which is where I'm from. I wouldn't move back there, but it's funny when you spend a bit of time in the place where you were brought up. You kind of realize how that place has had quite a big effect on you or made you a certain way.

It's funny how you can intensely investigate one very particular thing, and then it can lead you to other things through links and stuff like that. It's like you're going on this selective, very precise detour. But then it is strange because with it being so quick, there must be a difference.

If you wanted to be a creative person and you are confronted with the sum product of mankind's creativity up to this moment in history, that's pretty daunting, like, "Where can I fit my voice in amongst all that?"

There are some quite funny things about getting famous and stuff, but I think there comes a point where you have to think to yourself, "Well, am I doing this because I want to go to a party and meet Britney Spears? Or am I doing it because I want to create something that excites me?"

I would rather kill myself than play my own music... I can't stand it when people do that.

We live in an age where people are kind of a bit obsessed with celebrity and stuff. You can't help but be curious about it.

Human beings aren't meant to be solely consumers - eventually, something has to come out. Otherwise, I don't really see what the point of all that consumption is. The idea behind watching things and listening to things is that it stirs something within you, and hopefully that will stimulate you to then create your own thing.

I travel backwards and forwards quite a lot.

I live very near to the train station. I'm kind of playing at being an expatriate, I suppose.

I don't really care what someone's background is; creativity can come from any background.

If you're in a band or think of yourself as a slightly creative person, you can get quite self-indulgent, so sometimes it's nice to have those people who bring you down to earth, but in a pleasant way.

[Jeffrey Lewis is] The best lyricist working in the US today.

I like bossy girls. I don't like girls who just do whatever they think you want them to do, and follow you around trying to please you all the time.

In a song you can kind of stage-manage everything so that it puts you in a good light. And once a song is recorded, it always performs well.

The good thing about people really is their iffy-ness and dodginess, isnt it?

If you perform on a stage or you sing a song, it's like you sing your song, and then the words go into the air, and then they go into somebody's body through their ears, so it's kind of like penetrating somebody. It's kind of like having sex with somebody - but, obviously, from a great distance.

Often people poopoo melody as if it's a cheap trick to make people like things, but in my experience it's the hardest part of the tune, to find something that doesn't immediately remind you of something that's happened before.

Hollywood is called Hollywood, but holly doesn't grow there.

Right from the start it's based on a lie. But it's a very seductive lie, and we're still entranced by it.

I don't think people should abuse the fact that they are in showbiz.

You still have to be human. I think that's the point. Showbiz is about showing human things - just amplified, that's all. And when it gets too much into, "Hey, we're part of the showbiz club and we can do what we want," it turns me off and I hate it.

I love the Beatles. I haven't named any kids after them but I still really love them. They were the first group that I was ever properly aware of. In my early teens I would sometimes stay in and listen to the radio all day in the hope that I would catch a song by them that I'd never heard before and be able to tape it on my radio-cassette player.

France is a republic, and the rules in theory have been made by everyone rather than imposed by a dictatorship or king or whatever. So it's like, we've got to stick to these rules because we made them.

The thing with Disney songs is they're very manipulative, very sentimental, but they do get you, you know - there's a kind of sadness to them and that kind of music doesn't really exist any more.

I know that some filmmakers strive for a kind of naturalistic approach, but you're never going to capture something that's really natural - just the simple fact that you choose to put a frame around something means that you've already chosen one particular thing to put more attention on.

Paris is like a beautiful woman, but she's very haughty, she's not interested in you. She's very nice to look at but you can't quite get it together with her.

There isn't much I find interesting to write about in middle-class life.

Noise is an easy thing to hide behind.

If you make a lot of noise and shout behind that, nobody can tell what you're singing.

Part of why I started a band was due to feelings of shyness and social ineptitude. I saw it as some way of being able to interact with people from a safe distance. It's always been about trying to get to know people. Albeit, it's a bit of a contradiction because you can't really get to know people when they're 10 feet away and there's a big mass of them.

You can do anything when you're famous. That's why famous people are so dumb.

Pulp existed for 12 years before we got famous.

Now, you could say that was just lack of imagination, but it's some kind of quality isn't it? Tenacity. You could also say it was sloth.