Damon Albarn Quotations

I want to be a better person in every aspect. I really don't feel I've in anyway fulfilled my potential in every area of my life. But I'm optimistic.

Being in Blur has allowed me to travel and hear the music that's being made all over the world.

Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

It's not like my old self - I'm not in character anymore, I'm me. I'm not hiding behind that anymore.

It always struck me that Africa was, in a strange way, a futuristic place and had elements and vibes and spirits that were going to inform the future. Africa Express is an attempt to engage that power outside Africa, and for everyone to benefit from it.

I spent two years figuring out how I could turn it into something that would satisfy me as a musician but also make some kind of cross-cultural link. I feel that I kind of at least touched on the possibilities of cross-cultural music, but it is a lifetime's work, and I don't profess to be anything other than a novice at it.

The whole period has taught me that I enjoy being part of an ensemble rather than just a front man. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy that too, but I get more enjoyment out of really listening to everyone.

Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

As soon as it sounds fine, I'm on to the next thing, man.

What you learn from working with other performers and musicians is invaluable, really, and can only help you grow. I mean, if you spend your whole life focusing on yourself, you're not really learning much.

The cartoon is a metaphor really for the fact that it's almost impossible in our celebrity obsessed culture to move around genres and sort of change you ideas, change your face, you know?

More and more, cultural groups are cross-pollinating, and we're getting much more interesting art as a result.

The things that make me happy most are my family and working.

The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV. Because at least you know that there's some intelligence behind the cartoons, and there's a lot of work that's gone into it, so it can't all be just a lie

No, every album is something like a snapshot. It only shows one moment in time. It shows what we feel and think right at that point in time, nothing more and nothing less

I hope we can keep doing it this way - making music and art that are pure products of our influences while not really having to let the whole celebrity side of it get in the way. Then maybe more virtual bands will come out and do the same thing.

If you don't see something as a career but as an important part of your life, you don't know how you're going to feel about it.

I'm a working musician, so it's what I do. I kind of always have lots of plates spinning, and it's the ones that keep spinning the longest that I end up doing.

China is one of those vast, continental conglomerates that... I mean, if they were to start a tourist trade in China, they'd just bus people in from another province, you know what I mean? They're very self-contained.

I don't need to be a frontman all the time, and in fact, the older I get, the less of an urge it is inside me to play that role. I've still got it inside me, and I do occasionally allow it out.

I like to go to Africa purely with something to do. I'm not very comfortable getting into an armor-plated Land Rover and going to see things, with my hand gel, you know, it's not me at all. So I like to hang out and you know, really get to know people and try and do something that resonates with them.

I was approached by Oxfam to go to Mali as their ambassador and get involved in their various initiatives out there. But I felt that was missing the point of using me, a musician

I'm not really one of those people who believes that if you're a musician you can just leave that behind and start getting into politics

I can't be bothered anymore about giving songs titles.

I think pop music is a great place to get new ideas across.

And there are no stars and that you're never really sure who's doing what and what voice is what and, you know what I mean? It's supposed to be quite elusive

I can't really make another Blur record that's a big landscape sort of thing, due to my very basic guitar ability, ... I want to sing and play so it has to be three chords. I can only do three chords and not look at the guitar.

I enjoyed history at school. I'd always had a sense of pagan England.

Manchester is the centre of Britain, we're only ever going to do this once so it makes sense to do it somewhere in the middle of the country. London gets all the gigs. It's time to do something a bit different to readdress the balance. We're very excited to be getting all the guests artists together in one place for these shows.

You know, there are many alter egos and Gorillaz is a collective of alter egos, really. I think anyone who gets involved in it has to sort of accept that nothing is really as it seems.

We intend to do a massive world tour with Demon Days, but I won't be involved with it. It'll be all animation and big sound systems and stuff.

We don't sit around thinking, 'This'll be great for kids' - it just happened to really appeal to them,

Well, I made fun of the people in the government and then realized that even if we got rid of them, they were replaced by exactly the same guys.

In the Sixties people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, people take Prozac to make it normal.

Change terrifies people. They like new, but they don't like new with change.

I've always known I'm incredibly special. All my life. You know? It's not a big deal.

As a musician usually music is your way out.

Oasis were like the bullies I had to put up with at school.

The best way to get to know Africa is to go there and see what it is. To know somewhere that crazy and that magnificent, you have to spend some time among people, the rhythm of their lives.

My guaranteed way of sending myself into deep depression is to read music trade papers and watch MTV.

I was naive enough to believe it would be enough to replace the government. Well, I made fun of the people in the government and then realized that even if we got rid of them, they were replaced by exactly the same guys.

Every time I go to Africa, I see the future. I see what the Western world is going to become. It's a very futuristic place.

There's need to be some sort of disturbance in your psyche for creativity to be sparked.

There's always been a hip-hop element to my trousers.

Each individual has their own opinions about whether war is an answer to any problems. Personally I think it's a waste of time, but I think more importantly, that it's is an issue that we haven't had any say in. That's why I feel so strongly about it. I don't feel like we've really been given any choice in this matter. I think if you had a referendum tomorrow, Tony Blair would have no choice but to call off the war.

In Africa, as resources inevitably disappear, people have to make do with a lot less. You have to be much more ingenious with a lot less, and accept that you can't get your perfect tuna sandwich on a street corner.

It's important that Oasis are rude about everybody and that they get drunk...Fair enough. It's nice, isn't it? But it's nothing to do with me. They came to see us in Manchester and they were very pleasant boys. Very nice. I'd like to see that as a quote. Oasis are very nice boys.

Danger Mouse is now working on a bunch of other records, translating his ideas about remixing into all sorts of other projects.

Yeah. You've seen The Sun today; I've got myself a big house, settled down. Apart from the odd night out with the New Fathers' Club, I'm a family man now.

When you're doing a deal with someone in the southern Sahara, it's a very different way of doing business than in London. You can't sign them in the usual way because they'd end up getting ripped off, which would defeat the object of setting up a label like this

If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge.

I was going through a break up. I was depressed... I really did need to do something. Recording an album was a great escape. I don't know what would have happened if I wouldn't have started to work.

I like to put my iPad on the window and leave it there for however long the journey is, so that I'm staring out, and it's staring out. We're kind of staring out together. It's very poetic to me, watching that absent-minded passing of time. You realize how much you've taken in. What is left of that memory of you staring out of the window for an hour? It's all on the iPad.

I have to wear a new T-shirt every night. I throw them into the audience. One day I'm going to go around the world and reclaim all my T-shirts

I'm an English songwriter/composer, working in Mandarin and trying to find something about Chinese culture that I really relate to and respect and feel some genuine emotions for - and it's quite hard, the pentatonic scale, and that, in a way, is why I think it works. Because I'm forced to limit myself to quite strict rules about what I did. Maybe that's how I avoided pastiche.

Trying to write music that's sensitive to 400 years ago takes a bit of madness, as it's such a long stretch of time.

I used to go to work and take heroin in the studio and then stop when I came home,

Whether people like it or not, China is incredibly important to the future of mankind. For me, this is something that we all need to have intelligent discussions about in America, in Britain, in Europe.

I'm not a monarchist. But I'm English. And I have an irrational emotion for my country.

I never really want to leave it as an inspiration; I just can't get enough of it.

I'm English, and I started off as a songwriter, so I can't really escape that - it's there.

On Blur bassist Alex James: I used to punch Alex a lot. He used to say really annoying things. I think he liked being punched.

The concert was all about raising awareness, but Peter looked like he was having trouble raising his own awareness - he looked wasted,

It's also why I don't print lyrics anymore. I figure if you can't get the feeling across adequately with the song, then you've failed anyway.

I feel John Peel was somebody that we could all trust. Throughout his life, he gave people a sense of a bigger world out there.