[1999] They were just points of principle. There was Never Do An Encore, which we've stuck to; Never Do Drugs, which I've kept to - dunno about James and Sean. The first time Richey had a spliff, it was a shattering moment for the band. It was on the tour bus and one of the crew was smoking then Richey goes, 'Can I have one of them?' Meanwhile, I'm tearing my hair out, going, 'Right, that's it, we're going to have to split up now.' Then there was Never Write A Love Song, which we've broken; Never Grow Facial Hair, which we've all had a go at...

When I first moved down to this house, the conservative councillor down the road, they interviewed him and he went: "Yes, if he's throwing any wild rock star pool parties we'll soon report him!" Um... I'm probably the most conservative person in the whole street... in certain ways.

The day Richey went missing a huge part of our kind of rock'n'roll died.

[1994] Fucking smokers. I hate it when they start coughing, going on about their health, craving sympathy when they're killing everybody.

Drugs are the biggest get-out clause in the world. Dope enhances your creativity? Bollocks! It destroys your brain cells. When we came to London it was 'Hey, chill out, spliff up man'. But our calling-card was 'Anxiety is freedom'.

[on Richey Edwards's disappearance] It just doesn't add up to us. It's just done my fucking head in. I've got this vision of Richey before, he left us; it was a Monday and he brought me The Daily Telegraph. He was so happy because he knew how much I love the sports section... You get Boy George promoting a comeback single on TFI... saying: 'Oh yeah, Richey, it's an Agatha Christie.' It's fucking not! You've got his family and the band with lives completely fucked up.

[1994] We were rock's equivalent of the TSB. The band that likes to say 'yes'.

Richey [Edwards] got three As [at A-Levels]. The c**t. I suppose that was the difference. [he himself got two As and a B]

He [Richey Edwards] was obviously an academic, I wasn't. I was the one who was underweight and I just fucking dossed around. I got Richey to do some of my essays; he finished a year before me, being a year older. I got a 2:2, which I was fucking surprised about. Richey was devastated that he didn't get a first; he was 2 per cent away. He used to go out for dinner with his tutors. He had a leather jacket and a jumper that was weird. People don't understand; we've got so many fond memories of Richey...

Pete Townshend used to say that going on stage was like heroin and I've never been on heroin but that felt like, well, it felt like four paracetamols which is the most drugs I've ever taken.

I must admit, in all my years in the industry, cocaine seems back with a vengeance. It hardly breeds reasoned behaviour, but it sometimes breeds good records.

The one constant in Richey's [Richey Edwards] life which he enjoyed was drinking. The fact that it put him to sleep. He'd drink on his own - not a social thing.

I could never see the argument that Trainspotting glamorised heroin, 'cos I think it's incredibly seedy, but the very fact that handsome actors are making loads of money doing a brilliant film is obviously glamorous. Drugs, for me, I just find them incredibly boring and I find the people that take them incredibly boring.

At university, I never spent my money on beer like all the union crowd. I just used to go into town and play on the fruit machines. I got to be a bit of an expert at it. In fact I was completely addicted, and I ended up £3,000 in debt because of it. I've never drank or taken a single drug in my life, so I guess fruit machines took their place.

I was never very interested in clothes back then [at university], and I never shopped at thrift shops. I was a bit of a nerdy casual. I was into golf so I even used to wear Pringle jumpers. We did used to get stuff from Oxfam when we started spray-painting shirts for the band, but that's different. It was only the rich kids that wanted to dress down like that.

We like to threaten people sexually. Especially males.

On our first European tour I remember us going to Frankfurt and seeing the needles at the station and being so shocked. We had never had anything to do with that.

[1991] We all decided that from the start, me and Richey [Edwards] can't write music but we can write lyrics and look pretty tarty. Richey's the spirit of the band.

Fried food is fucking great, isn't it? It's just that feeling that it's a little bit burnt.

Probably 10 or 20 per cent of our fans are completely into every aspect of us as a group and as people, but there's always going to be people who think 'Design for Life' is about wanting to get pissed. That's life, it doesn't bother me. Sometimes it's just as good to see a bunch of lads wrecked out of their heads, jumping up and down, as it is to see hardcore fans down the front, mouthing every single word. Some of our earliest gigs, when we didn't have any fans, were the best, because they were so close to the edge of some kind of violence. There were blokes looking at us thinking, 'What the fuck are those prats doing up on stage, shouting and ranting?' It gives you a thrill, really. It's always nice being hated and loved at the same time.

I think I exist in a completely different world to every other 'rock star', inverted commas, in the world. My lifestyle, for one. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I've never taken a drug in my life, I've been married for five years and I believe in marriage and all that kind of stuff. I still live in the valleys in South Wales on a mountain, completely isolated. I'm not out drinking, I'm not sat in being depressed and taking Prozac. I can't relate to any other person in music. That is the thread - what I see, whether it's through my Venetian blinds or through my TV. If people want to say I live a shallow life, I'm totally open to criticism, but this is my truth as I see it. I still feel in many ways exactly the same as I did when the band started. I avoid cliché by my lifestyle. I think that's important to me. As much as I admire someone like Thom Yorke, I cannot relate to one of his lyrics whatsoever. I just hear someone who I can't recognise in myself. Some of his preoccupations are the same as mine - like flying, and oxygen, and death, and all the rest of it - it just seems to come from a different angle.

[on what people get wrong about him] That I've got a big mouth. That I'm not very clever, and I'm gay.

[on whether Richey Edwards changed with success] Oh, it fucked him. It didn't change him, it fucked him.

[after mentioning that he was a vegetarian for three years as a teenager and lived off chips and Kit-Kats by the end because he didn't really like vegetables] [I like vegetables now] as long as they're fried. Fried broccoli. Boil it first, then fry the fuck out of it. Bit of Welsh salted butter. It's still good for you, though, isn't it?

There's just so much fucking hate within this band that sometimes we just flop down at the end of the day and think, 'Why are we still like this?'

[on "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next"] A fucking complex song about the Spanish Civil War with a massive title - the longest title in pop history to get to No 1 until recently - and some lines in there which you would never hear in a No 1 record. And I think it must be the only pro-war song to be No 1.

I'm attracted by egotistical, megalomaniac, paranoid people. Radiohead are Kennedy, Manic Street Preachers are Nixon.