"Yeah, remember them? They had one hit in the late '90s, and their second album tanked."

"I'm always frightened about something, like I said. It was a receding hairline, and now it's whether anyone thinks we've lost it. But I know what we think of it, and I know we couldn't have possibly made anything better at the moment. And it might not be Pet Sounds, but it's the best we can do."

"Listen … we don't really know what we're talking about, but these websites do, and these people do." That's our reaction to always being asked to do adverts and commercials; rather than having a big Pepsi logo on our album, we wanna have Amnesty's website."

"I'm sure one day we'll be desperate for money or exposure, and we'll go crawling back to the Gap and say, "Hey, are you sure you don't want a song?" But at the moment we can say, "Fuck 'em."

"You idiots. You really messed up a great opportunity. Good luck in McDonald's."

"It's about making the most of this amazing opportunity, because we can't believe we've been given it. That applies to the band and to our lives in general. And it's about girls, of course. Because isn't everything?"

How did you prepare for Glastonbury: "Have you ever seen Rocky IV? We went to Russia and got a log cabin, just chopped wood."

"I always feel guilty that someone has to come and clean my room, so I always try to give it a brief tidy first. I leave a tip and a nice note. I'm not lying, ask anyone that's slept with me."

"We feel it's our duty when we are on radio to talk about bands that we like because other wise everyone just listens to pop!"

"All that alan McGee stuff was great for us. You know, Mohammed Ali trained by getting hit in the face as many times as possible. Then he beat George Forman in the rumble in the jungle. So the more people that hit us in the head the better we'll become."

"I did enjoy Glastonbury. I enjoy every day. No that sound cheesy. I don't enjoy any of it."

"The rest of the band isn't here because...they're basically asleep."

"We've grown up a bit, travelled a lot more, met so many people. Musically too, we've heard more: the Bunnymen, The Cure, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, New Order... The last two years, we've been like a cultural sponge. We've sucked it all in and now it's coming out on this record. A lot of it is meant to be about drive and confidence in the face of worry and insecurity."

"We were just sat there one day and trying to sound like Neil Young, and Yellow came out."

"We've got lots of ideas...not sure how good they are, though. We play two new songs live, one's called "Why does it always snow on him" and one's "Deadwood"...the titles just popped into our heads."

'We were trying to say that there is an alternative, that you can try to be catchy without being slick, poppy without being pop, and you can be uplifting without being pompous. Because we're sometimes playing quieter stuff, it's hard to sound like we're trying to change things, but we wanted to be a reaction against soulless rubbish."

"It's ridiculous trying to have to break it down into media-friendly soundbites afterwards but we're buzzing like fireflies man. We've got to go and have a big party now. No words can express the joy of being in Coldplay. Let me just translate it by this sound: "wheeeeeeee......"

"If there's one thing running through it it's about every day you have is like a big chance, you know, to do something mega. Even on days when we're grumpy and... especially with what we do, you know. We have the opportunity to do something really special and we wanna do it before we... get assassinated."

"Shiver is the only song I know that's written about three girls, because it took so long to get written. Just about different girls that I thought didn't like me. I started singing about Natalie Imbruglia. She's very small, she's 2 foot high."

"When you are in a band, you have weights, which you carry around like a ball and chain. In America, no one cares if you went to university, in Britain it's like a curse. There's a real tall poppy syndrome here. But university life is pretty similar to rock 'n' roll, lots of waiting around, lots of playing music, lots of girls and lots of drugs!"

"I'm sick of all this rubbish heavy music. It's noisy but tuneless. When Nirvana was around, they actually had melodies. At the Drive-In is one of the only good rock bands left."

"Eminem is amazing ... brilliant. I knew him when he was first starting out. He used to say to me, 'D'ya think I'll make it, Chris?' I used to say, 'Yeah, you'll make it, Em.' But he was always forgetting his name, he'd always have to remind himself by asking, 'My name is...?' 'My name is....?' The poor fella. I don't like Limp Bizkit as much; I can never work out the lyrics. If I knew what he was singing about, I might like it. Someone will probably have a pop at me for that."

"Vanilla Ice started it, I suppose. He is the grandfather of white rap. I think Eminem would secretly love to be Vanilla Ice!"

"We've got new material coming out of our ears. Our next record is going to be the best record ever made. It sounds quite aggressive and there's a lot of swearing (not)."

"Mellow, that's our next single, a bit like Yellow only slower."

"Don't get me wrong because I think the thing within every singer, certainly every singer worth their salt, is a mix of incredible arrogance and incredible paranoia, I get up in the morning and I think, 'Right. I'm in the best band in the world, what are we going to do today?' And then, also, I'm convinced that no one else agrees with me. So it's a mixture of offensive and defensive."

"We haven't done anything yet, you know? If I die tomorrow, I'd still have to be the one to be impressed to meet John Lennon in the afterlife, and I'd like it if we could meet on equal terms. And if I could say, 'You know, I'm in Coldplay,' and he said, 'Well, I'm in the Beatles,' and, you know, 'Let's have a drink.' And argue about who was the best. And that would be great."

"The Brit awards were fine because we got to meet Ant and Dec. We are big fans of theirs... we honestly are! We were on acid, Ant looked like a giant toaster, we were off our nuts!"

"At The Drive In are excellent, Starsailor, Alfie, PJ Harvey is amazing. There's always good stuff coming out all the time. There's this other band called Coldplay ... I've heard they're an all right band!"

"For a long time, I always felt slightly afraid of listening to things I thought were too different to what I was supposed to like. Then suddenly I realized that's absolute nonsense. And you can listen to anything."

how to keep A Rush of Blood to the Head, off the Internet: "I should ring up everyone who's got a copy and say, 'Please don't sell it, 'Or we'll fuck you up.' I could add that part on the end. We should never let anyone hear it, ever, We should just release the artwork and a CD with 'Yellow' on it."

"They never write, 'Brilliant, here's another Coldplay! They always go, 'Oh, for fuck's sake, not another Coldplay. One's quite enough, thank you, as Mary Poppins would say.'"

"1823--we've been a band for 116 years, that's why some people say we're richer."

"I think the Beatles should have been credited on all of their songs, not just Lennon and McCartney. In the end, I think the drumbeat is as imprtant to a song as the melody."

"We have nothing but positive things to say about internet piracy. The only time that I don't think it should happen is when people are hearing things that we don't think are really good. Personally, I really like buying albums. I got the Oasis album free, but I went and bought it as I thought it would be fun."

"Your inability to create soundbites, your appearance, your photographs, your background, the way you talk...it all gets in the way. The test is whether people will be able to sit down and listen to us in 50 years' time when all they have is our music. Everything else mucks it up. If you say one stupid thing about cocaine as a joke and it stops three people from listening to your music..."

``That's the only reason why we stay on tour. I like nothing more after a hard day's work than to do loads of cocaine, meet some local whores and then talk about how great Radiohead are, and how we should be more like them.''

``No, of course not. I'm lying. But I bet that gets pulled out as a quote.''

``The songs are much more famous than we are. Maybe if we pulled up in a big car and spat everywhere, or if I'd hit someone ..."

"It often seems that our hardcore fans are the ones that hate us the most."

``I didn't want to be in a band because of the glamor but I always assumed it would be very glamorous. It's not people walking in front of you scattering rose petals, which apparently Mariah Carey has. It's waiting around in little portakabins.

``I dunno; I'm as confused as the next man. I used to be Christian, but I can't understand why people are interested in that. I used to do lots of things."

"I got this scar with Britney Spears.She's got really long nails."

"We came in by helicopter just five minutes ago. No, Will and I turned up in a Ford Escort and they wouldn't let us in the car park! We couldn't park next to Posh's limo. We have got nothing. Will came in by bicycle and Guy is still on a donkey. He's still in London! "

"It's tremendously exciting to be in our band because you hear something you like, learn how to do it and steal it. It's like stealing cars and welding them together. We've stolen the Bunnymen's cars, The Cure's car, the Stones' car...Everyone!"

"I think I'm crap, which drives me. but I also think we are brilliant."

on yellow: "I was trying to rip off the Verve. A seaside version of 'Bittersweet Symphony.' The version you could play for your parents. By a nice boy."

"We were just learning and confused, and we needed to have a bit of time out to have some singing lessons, and to understand that people weren't joking when they said they wanted us to play. That's a big thing for me because it's really made me much more confident and much more excited about playing in front of lots of people. I mean, if Pavarotti still has singing lessons, then I certainly should." Opera's a bit different, isn't it? "I know, but have you tried singing 'Yellow' every night?"

"A lot of shit bands sell lots of records and a lot of great bands don't. We're not kidding ourselves. We always feel like everyone's having a giggle at us, and someone's going to turn around and say, 'Actually, you really are shit and we were just joking.'"

"I always liked the idea of falling in love with one of your teachers, who is a lady, and just running off. Somewhere sort of Robinson Crusoe-like with no stuff, living in the wild, like Tarzan and Jane. I love that."

"Between you and me and your readers, I had this experience the other day, which just made my life. I can't tell you what it is, but I remember when I was 16 and thinking, 'That would be cool to do.'" .Well, I did it the other day. And it was good."

"Like if George W. Bush and China put on some Coldplay and went, 'Let's be friends.' That would be nice."

"The last instance was on Saturday. You know when you really like someone and you pull off all your best moves and crack your best gags. Mind you, we'd just come off an aeroplane the night before, so I was jet lagged and really pale. I didn't even get digits! She could've been the one! But she went away thinking I was a knob. That always happens. I'm always splitting up with girls, man!"

"I hate adverts and they've (America) got really bad ones. Then the programme comes on and that's not much better. And they don't warn you. Watching 'Ghostbusters' takes about nine weeks. Adverts after every line. I always have these dreams where you can't get somewhere and it's really frustrating. Watching American television is a bit like that. Please let us see what happens!"

"We're empty again now. Drained of ideas. Who knows if we'll do it again?"

"We had to decide whether we were a bunch of students who got lucky or were we going to admit that we are really fucking good? Actually it was me. Was I going to admit we are one of the best bands in the world? I thought, I might die at ny moment and I've been given this amazing opportunity with my best friends. And at that point we were doing ridiculous things--hanging out with U2--and I thought, I wouldn't want to be in U2, I am actually already in one of the best bands in the world."

"You know in The Terminator when Arnold Schwarzenegger lands back in time with no clothes, slightly confused? Well, that was us. Then he goes into a bar and beats people and goes, "I need your clothes." Well, that what it was: We just needed some clothes. We needed to get our heads together, that was all, and it takes time to adapt to the idea that you don't have to spell your band name anymore. Just like by the end of The Terminator, everyone knows who that cat is. It's the same with us."

"So it's a funny mixture between "Oh, we can't believe it!" and "Yeah, we believe it." Like when we won the Grammy, one side was "We can't believe it" and the other was "Why didn't we get six?"

"Yeah, I went to the set of The X-Files once,... then I upset one of the cast members, just because I was a little bit bored and there were no cookies left."

"To me, our albums might seem like The Godfathers I, II and III--some epic journey. But to others it might be like Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot!. "

"It's a funny day when you realize that--when you realize that Jennifer Lopez is just as ugly as you in the morning..."

"I would be like some terrible version of Sting, and no one would want that! No, I don't think Sting is bad at all, I like Sting...well, he's all right, but the Police were better, you know what I'm saying?"