Paul Weller Song Quotations

When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.

In all honesty, I don't know what one song can change.

Coming from a little suburban town, I wasn't a hip city kid. I was quite the opposite, really. Songs like 'Saturday's Kids' rang a bell for kids all over the country. That song was about the kids I grew up with.

You have to keep challenging yourself. I've always tried to do that, and I'm not saying I've always been successful. Maybe I've rewritten the same song; it's inevitable, but I've always been mindful of taking the writing somewhere else. You can't stick in your little comfort zone.

I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.

The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time.

I'm not big on rap, to be honest. I just don't get it. It's angry people shouting. I like a song, melodies, people singing.

I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.

It can get boring. Not the playing the songs necessarily, or doing the clothes. You know, you need stimulus.

I could say that 'Exile On Main Street' was my favourite or whatever, but I'm more about the songs and the artists and the sound that they bring.

I get bored quickly. I kind of take my hat off to bands who have been around for a long time and still do the same thing, because it's hard to keep a band together for decades. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't play the same songs night after night or just trade on my past glories, because it wouldn't interest me as a person.