• "I've never seen the point of cover version. If a song's really good,you leave well alone, and if it's really bad - you leave well alone. Why spend ten hours re-recording someone else's stuff when you could write one of your own? It's all to do with having a bit of confidence." --Mat on doing cover versions.

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• "There are people all over the world who hate Suede...it's quite a universal thing,There's people in remote hillside tribes who hate us." --on media critics

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• "There's a spirit to the band that's bigger than the people in it. I almost feel like one of these days, me and Brett and Simon could leave and they can get some younger people, like a bunch of 7-year-olds and as long as they have the right spirit, it will turn into a little Suede. I plan to be the McDonald's of the 21st century."---on Suede recruiting youths.

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• "Yeah, we were 16 when we started playing together. I didn't have any other interests. I couldn't see any point in being in a band unless it was a great band, and a big band" -on teaming up with Brett.

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• "I probably would be a janitor, yeah. Brett would too. In fact, everyone in the band was cleaning toilets at some point. Honestly, that's totally true! We only found this out recently. We were just talking about trades that we've done, and we'd all cleaned toilets. So there'd be this internationally elegant toilet-cleaner, strutting around different parts of England. We could start a company. That's what I'll be doing." --on other interest

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• "We've heard a bit about Oasis doing all right over in US,It's very strange 'cause all of those bands in Britain are pop bands. Us and Oasis and Pulp and people like that, I mean, that is the mainstream in Britain. So no one gets really sort of fluffed up about someone in America saying these things are cool, indie, alternative stuff. 'Cause in Britain, we are Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson. These are the bands you hear on the radio, and these are the bands you see on TV and these are the bands that are No. 1." --on Brit bands' popularity in US

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• "When we started off, all the bands around us were very cool. We came along with this collection of songs -- we were quite passionate about what we did. For two years people just laughed at us.That's just the way Britain works. It's quite exciting. It's quite frustrating. But that's just the way it goes." --on being in a band.

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• "I never thought of us as being that English. It wasn't until we came to America that it became an issue. I thought we sounded pretty universal. I mean, I think we're great. So I always find it strange when you find people who don't." --about their music.

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• 'We never had a rhythm guitarist and we've never played anything that's just block chords, y'see. I guess I learned a lot from Bernard really; he was always playing melodies, he'd never just go "dang dang dang," so I ended up absorbing that melodic side. My influences are really corny, though… just Paul McCartney, really. Every style, every way of playing bass, it's there on Abbey Road; listen to that and you don't need manuals or teachers."--about his influence

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• "We weren't any good 'til we kicked her out," --on Justine's departure

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• "No, I don't think we will be doing a rap album,"--on doing rap

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• "We're quite insular as a band. We don't even allow people to hear tapes of us playing. But Neil was... pretty clued up. I don't even know how we knew that. Almost from the way he looked and the way he talked."--on Neil's presence in their studio before he joined the band.

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