He’s like a man with a fork, in a world of soup. (about his brother Liam)
(on learning Westlife had beaten Oasis, U2 and The Beatles in an album chart battle in November 2006): There is no God.
If I ever get to go to the moon, I’ll probably just stand on the moon and go ‘Hmmm, yeah…fair enough…gotta go home now.
When you get to a certain age you find that other people’s opinions don’t really matter anymore, and you get kind of uncomfortable with your place in modern life.
True perfection has to be imperfect. I know that sounds foolish, but it’s true.
In business, you can have one massive success that earns $50 million overnight, and that’s it. You’re successful. End of story. But in the music business, you have to keep on doing it.
You’ve got to be strong enough for love. It’s very easy to be cool and cynical. It’s very difficult to just let yourself go and be in love. You’ve got to be strong enough for that.
I’ve always been into guitars… we want to put keyboards on, but keyboard players don’t look cool onstage, they just keep their heads down. There has never been a cool keyboard player, apart from Elton John.
American sports are quite masculine. And football – although it’s still played by men all over the world – football compared to American football is quite feminine in its artistry. And there’s no padding. It’s America’s loss, though.
I absolutely loved being famous. It was all great, up until the point when it wasn’t.
Anything that’s of any use, famous people get hold of it and take it for themselves and it gets a bad rap.
Music is a thing that changes people’s lives. It has the capacity to make young people’s lives better.
What’s problematic about playing stadiums and driving around in private jets and drinking champagne at 8 o’clock in the morning? What’s wrong with that? I haven’t got a problem with that. I can’t fathom why people would.
My first instinct when I write songs is not a negative one. It’s something positive… Everything I’ve ever done has some form of hope in it, I think.
You’ve just got to trust your instincts and realize that you can’t please all the people all the time. You’ve got to please yourself ultimately in the end.
To be quite honest, John Lennon had questionable politics. There was a flip side. He was all peace and love, but he was a very violent character.
It’s a sad state when more people retweet than buy records.
I’m not interested in making money. It’s just that with my talent, I’m cursed with it.
My wife would say I’m not romantic at all, but I would say that I’m the ultimate romancer because I write about… life being brilliant.
Rock n’ roll to me is all about freedom of thought and to be whatever you want to be.