“The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don’t think what you’re doing is punk rock.”

I thought everybody was in on the joke. But I was the joke.

I hate celebrities. I really hate them.

We’d go through the script together, rehearsing it before every shot with the other actors. He was just easy to work with. We were able to put it in my language, which was really important.

They have bad taste. I am not a good-looking guy.

Punk is always something that’s going to be with us and to try and explain that would be stupid at this point.

With the video for Boulevard of Broken Dreams we were going for something a bit like Ladykillers, you know? Pretty and demented at the same time…like me!

Some times I need to apologize, sometimes I need to admit that I ain’t right, sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut, or only say hello, sometimes I still feel I’m walking alone.

That was the hard part of having kids: trying to be on their schedule, then fighting to get to sleep while they are sleeping.

I’m always a work in progress.

When I was done with the movie [Ordinary World], I felt really compelled to start working on another album. Little did I know, they were going to come out back to back.

Pretty and demented at the same time, like me.

I’m a songwriter-I’m obligated to keep pushing myself.

You want a drumstick? Like a ice cream cone or a chicken wing!?

When you start getting into your politics it’s like you have to be vulnerable and you have to be sort of sensitive. Because if it’s always like straight aggression all the time, there becomes no empathy for the stance that you’re taking.

Music to me is the air I breathe it’s the blood that pumps through my veins that keeps me alive

The quietest are often working-class people, people who are broke. There is a fear of losing whatever it is that you have. I come from that background.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen… It felt like you had this naive idea that you could change things just by wearing something.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.

Punk is always something that’s going to be with us and to try and explain that would be stupid at this point.

I’ve not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I’ll listen to ‘Spiral Scratch’ by the Buzzcocks, or ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.

Punk will never be dead to me. It’s my life. I can never just drop this lifestyle. It embodies me.

Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.

I always thought we had more in common with punk than with anything else, but we had long hair, so we didn’t fit in that box.

In the 70s, what thrash was there? Punk came on, and that was cool. But there was no thrash.