Thom Yorke Quotes

Our merchandised may be over priced, but I think it's reasonable considering I only want more money.

Generally, it's not good to be engaged directly with the political system unless you are qualified. It`s a very depressing business, the way politics works. You get stuck into it, but then, at some point, you have to walk away. I had to walk away, because it's like this dark, black energy void. There are some people who have dedicated their lives to living in that energy void, but I can't do it. I just can't go there. It feels like you're treading water too much when you do. It's a crazy thing.

I tied a bunch of balloons to a beach chair and tried to float up to heaven. *begins to weep* There's no heaven, and birds tried to kill me! *shrivels up*

I'm glad I escaped the clutches of those evil gnomes... I'm talking, of course, about Puerto Ricans.

You cannot kickstart a dead horse

You know, it's never easy to understand why I do what I do. For other people, I mean.

If I could do just one thing to change the world, I'd make everyone Thom Yorke, and this would be paradise.

What happens a lot with songwriting is that a melody or rhythm or something stays with you like catching a cold. And during that time what happens is that I can then fit things on to it, it all fits and glues together. Sometimes it's crazy cos it can almost be anything. But if you catch the cold then the nonsense makes sense. It's like you're getting beamed it, like with a ouija board and something's pushing your hand. It's not a pleasant experience necessarily.

Most of my dancing is actually convulsions from having to listen to my own music

We don't have to stand on a soap-box and preach because hopefully we're channelling it through the new record.

I suppose one thing that's always fascinated me is that thing where you're a band and you want to start recording and you get a label and a producer, and then there's that pressure to go out there and really toil.

Performing is great, but you are exposed to all this extra stuff that you don't have to deal with when you stop. I'm getting used to it now, but it's kind of just the fallout. It's really weird. It's not a natural situation to be in. It sounds like moaning, because I know that's what I'm supposed to do, and I'm not moaning.

I wrote a lot of stuff quickly: pages and pages of notes that seemed pretty incoherent at first. Most of it was taken from the radio because -suddenly being a parent- I'd be confronted by the radio giving a news report every hour of the day.

Have you ever seen any member of radiohead aside from me in public? Do they interact or 'lift' objects? Holograms, all of them. I created them in 1991 using my massive brainpower. Even pitchforkmedia is a product of my brilliant imagination.

If you don't trust everybody on stage with you, then you're in trouble.

Mephostopheles is the name of a male gigolo I knew. When he's reaching up to grab me, I suppose it's an erotic bit of poetry.

It's impossible being me, I radiate a glow that makes others turn and grimace in horror as if staring into the sun.

Bulletproof is about the fact that I was shot in the face and survived. Nah I'm joking that'd be grisly and awful.

I may have found the cure for cancer, and I think it might be Thom Yorke Serum.

We weren't listening to guitar bands, we were thoroughly ashamed of being a guitar band. So we bought loads of keyboards and learned how to use them, and when we got bored we went back to guitars.

As a boy I was a hermit crab, but I soon came out of my shell. Now I am a pincer crab, and soon I will be at my full power as a deadly nuclear lobster.

You think I have the responsibilty... I have the responsibility to give the fans a good time!

I can't wait to die so I can be a skeleton and play my chest like a xylophone.

I'm a full grown man and I'm not tall enough to ride a rollercoaster. So I will sit on the teacups, eat my tea and biscuits and reminisce with the cheshire cat who lives in my head. Oh hello Mr. Cheshire, lovely weather this morning. Mr. Cheshire? Oh my god.

Is Thom Yorke there? Oh he is? Well then how the can I be Thom Yorke, talking to you, right here, on the phone.

I wear my pants on my upper torso to be abstract and different.

Cigarrettes make you look cool

I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what's happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen.

If you Americans aren't from the stone age then explain to me how your president is a ****ing pterodactyl

I once tried playing baseball but I started crying.

The hardest part about being in radiohead is being inside a giant head that is a radio. Ha ha, little english humour there, or is it a hammer?

Open your mouth wide A universal sigh.

Well actually I'm not a man but a carrot. The band was eating salads one day and a carrot fell off of the salad bar onto a microphone and the band realized that they had just discovered something brilliant. Me.

And true love waits In haunted attics And true love lives On lollipops and crisps

The society, is, a dishwasher, where all the water, is, dead chipmunk blood. God I'm brilliant.

And the moral of the story is I'm Thom Yorke.

I guess I am narcisstic, but only in the sense that I am brilliant and tortured as well

You can't make an egg without frying an egg

I'll drown my beliefs. To have you be in peace.

I'm horrified of leprechauns. I'm horrified that I might be leprechauns.

I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless.

I'm listening to Aphex Twin. That makes me cultured and interesting.

I don't really think of most non-English as people, more or less indigenous squirrels that I fancy to kick around with my snakeskin French Persian Boots

I don't think young people are as demoralized as the media and government would like us to think. The obvious sign of that is how strong and how close personal connections are and how much people are able to build a life for themselves, despite all this stuff that's been thrown at them.

What the hell am I doing here?

To protest, I stood in the place of a waste receptacle and opened my mouth. That's how I lost my virginity *laughs*

I don't eat food, I Thom Yorke it. What's the difference? When normal people "eat" food, they first chew it with their "teeth" until it's small enough to go through their "esophagus" and then be broken down in their "stomach" and absorbed. When I Thom Yorke food, I chew it with my Thom Yorkes until it's small enough to go through my Yorke tube. It's then broken down in my Thomach, where if I eat too much sweets, I get a mean Thommy ache! But it's okay because Jonny's usually there to rub the pain out.

It's maybe a good thing to try to make music that feels reassuring in some ways - something that's got a good feeling, a good vibe about it.