Chris Martin

The goal is to try and make the perfect song. Which of course will never happen.

We rely more on enthusiasm than actual skill. Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically and people will like it more.

More idiots should just shut their mouths.

Everyone asks me about being so worried or thinking about existence as if I'm the only person who can't understand why a tree grows the way it does or why a person is in power when they're not that great. These are questions everyone has.

Record sales don't really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn't feel like he wasted his pocket money.

I can't believe we've got away with becoming this huge band. And we still haven't done anything I think is that good yet.

If a few companies were less greedy, the people at the bottom woud have a lot more.

I genuinely love Oasis, and I also genuinely love Beyonce. My body gets the same pleasure. If you like different types of music, it's OK to say it.

When you don't have food in your life, just for a day, it makes you realise you're lucky to have it the next day. So the day after fasting, the music that comes out will be very joyous.

I had a couple of years in the mid-2000s where it was really confusing to me. I was like, 'Why is our band sometimes a punch line?'

Somebody rang me up the other day and said 'Yellow' was on a karaoke machine. That made me genuinely excited. It's got a nice beat.

I'm petrified of reincarnation because, you know, I like being me.

You have two years to make a record and do what you like to it; then, you have 10 minutes to do an interview that could mess it all up. It's the Crispian Mills Syndrome.

What was I like as a kid? The same as I am now, just smaller with a higher voice.

What makes us a bit nervous is, in this instant age, to release something that might take more than one listen. Where everything is instantly judged on YouTube or something! It's a bit like releasing a horse and cart on a racetrack.

You gotta wear the right trousers if you're gonna be a rock star.

Even though the album is an endangered species, can we try and make a coherent and good one, even if it's like making a horse and cart at a Nascar conference?

I always dream about other musicians. And they're never interested in hanging out with us. It's like being at school and the bigger boys don't want to play with you!

I give complete respect to any couple that stays together, however they do it, whether they do it by going on red carpets or going hiking together, you know, or keeping themselves really quiet and trying to stay out of all that press stuff.

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you're singing it from someone else's angle. But it's always from me. It's just a new way of framing it.