Since we were kids, we grow up believing that astronauts are heroes - that to go up in a rocket is a heroic thing. These guys are bigger than movie stars. To me, it's... all a well-dressed-up lie, basically. There's billions spent on rockets up there, and there's millions starving down here. It don't make sense to me.

Ian Brown

Hell is being stuck in a lift with Elton John and the Queen Mother.

Ian Brown

My biggest fault is that I give people too much credit. Then they let you down. I'm 99.9 per cent perfect - that's how I look at myself and, therefore, everybody else too.

Ian Brown

I started doing karate when I was 11.

Ian Brown

I'd like to change the world. Eradicate poverty, racism, and sexism... all the usual things.

Ian Brown

Putting another human being above yourself isn't healthy. I think it's capitalistic.

Ian Brown

I love people, me, I believe in people. I love people too much.

Ian Brown

Belief outweighs talent. Self-belief's got me everything, self-belief.

Ian Brown

I give thanks for everything that's ever happened to me and for everything I've got.

Ian Brown

I went to a friend's 40th in Manchester, and there was a karaoke machine, and no one was having a go. My mate said, 'No one's singing because you're in the room.' I said, 'Who am I, Frank Sinatra?' They made me sing flipping 'My Star' to a backing track that sounded like '80s Roxy Music. It was pretty embarrassing, but I did it.

Ian Brown

Getting a grey beard's not cool.

Ian Brown

When you live in Manchester and it's raining every day, you've got to imagine the sun sometimes. When you're brought up in concrete, you aim for the green leaves. And when you get to the green leaves, you yearn again for concrete.

Ian Brown

Everybody is a star. It's true. And if you've got a light, don't let it go out. 'Cos some people sink under.

Ian Brown

I gave it up three weeks before my black belt, foolishly. I got to my third brown belt and must have trained for 18 months but never went for it. I was nearly 18 and got this thing in my head about, ' Who are they to grade me?' Trying to be a rebel when I should have done it. It's my only regret, not going for a black belt.

Ian Brown

They've had a hard life, the Oasis brothers. They've done really well to be semi-normal. It's always sad when your dirty linen is brought out in public.

Ian Brown

When I was 9, I was into T. Rex, Gary Glitter, and Alice Cooper. I knew The Beatles because my nan introduced me to them, but T. Rex was the first band I got into myself. I got 'Metal Guru' a few months after hearing 'Children of the Revolution' in Pwllheli in North Wales at a market.

Ian Brown

Just because I'm a successful singer who's loved and has been loved for years doesn't mean I'm sitting behind electric gates in my own fantasy land.

Ian Brown

The jails are full of kids from kids' homes. You're 16 years old, and you're out on the street. How you going to fend for yourself at 16 if you've not had an education? You're going to turn to crime.

Ian Brown

People in Russia learned English off the Beatles. People in Japan learned English off the Stone Roses. Noel Gallagher says music can't change the world, but the Roses made him want to start a group, so it changed his world.

Ian Brown

I went into jail with absolutely no respect whatsoever for authority, and I came out with even less.

Ian Brown

People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.

Ian Brown