Best Jarvis Cocker Quotes & Sayings

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. — Jarvis Cocker

You write a song about how you think at the time, and then gradually you drift away from that, and when it's far enough in the past, that's when you think, 'Now I have to write something new.' — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

I'm sure Sting's a lovely guy. It's just that nobody wants to be seen as that holier-than-thou thing. That over-earnestness is a bit of a problem with people in bands and celebrities or whatever. — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

I'm always amazed by people who blog all the time and tweet all the time, and still get things done. I don't know how they do it. — Jarvis Cocker

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

We've always been a bit out of touch with reality. — Jarvis Cocker

Well, once you've resigned yourself to the fact that you are the more mature pop performer and you're past the age you ever thought you would do it, you might as well do it as long as you can. As long as I can still lift a microphone, then I'll do it, you know. — Jarvis Cocker

Every woman I've had a relationship with has found this maddening; the fact that I will talk about anything on the stage, and reveal all this stuff, and yet when I'm at home, I clam up and won't discuss anything intimate or personal. — Jarvis Cocker

Oh you know, I've been writing a novel. — Jarvis Cocker

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

I would like to believe in an afterlife; it makes things more palatable. But I'm not banking on it. — Jarvis Cocker

The thing about radio is that it's got an intimate feel. What I like is that you don't have to give it your full attention - you can still do something else that the same time, whereas TV is all-enveloping: you have to sit there and pay attention to it, and give yourself over to it. You have to surrender to it, but you don't with radio. — Jarvis Cocker

The best thing you can give someone is the freedom to make their own mind up - and then, if it's not working out 5 years later, you can give your opinion. — Jarvis Cocker

Will you see Pulp again? Who knows. I'm not stoking those particular rumours. — Jarvis Cocker

The working class has been turned into a consuming class - a situation has been created where people value their worth by what they can afford. — Jarvis Cocker

For me, the great thing about music is that anybody can do it. — Jarvis Cocker

Also, because people like to multitask, in a way if you've got a bit of music on in the background and the lyrical content is making you want to listen to it, then that would probably put you off the texting you wanted to do. I think people like things that just make that right kind of noise, but leave your brain free to do something else. — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

Its OK to grow up, just as long as you don't grow old. Face it you are young. — Jarvis Cocker

Don't think that the things around you don't count, because they do. — Jarvis Cocker

Israel was thinking of warm beer, and muffins, and Wensleydale cheese, and Wallace and Gromit, and the music of Elgar, and the Clash, and the Beatles, and Jarvis Cocker, and the white cliffs of Dover, and Big Bend, and the West End, and Stonehenge, and Alton Towers, and the Last Night of the Proms, and Glastonbury, and William Hogarth, and William Blake, and Just William, and Winston Churchill, and the North Circular Road, and Grodzinski's for coffee, and rubbish, and potholes, and a slice of Stilton and a pickled onion, and George Orwell. And Gloria, of course. He was almost home to Gloria. G-L-O-R-I-A. — Ian Sansom

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

I always thought that I might retire from any form of sexuality by the age of 40 and just become a dignified older person. — Jarvis Cocker

Everybody's a bit screwed up, you know. You can take it as symptoms of a disorder, or you can take it as personality. Me, I'd rather think it as parts of personality. — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

For TV you also get those pre-interviews when researchers ask you what you're going to say. The pre-interview drives me insane. If they've already decided the outcome, why don't I just hand in an essay? Maybe if we talk we'll find something out. I'd rather just have an awkward pause. — Jarvis Cocker

Tabloids invoke freedom of speech, but they're not interested in that, they're just interested in who's shagging whom, who's got drunk. And if you take that pretend, faux moral standpoint, you end up with people in public life being completely boring. Like they've had their genitals removed. — Jarvis Cocker

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. — Jarvis Cocker

I guess I'm fairly insistent and maybe consistent. If I decide I'll do something, I generally will. — Jarvis Cocker