The establishment irritates you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight because once they’ve got you violent they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humour.
Limitless undying love, which shines around me like a million suns, calls me on and on across the universe.
Nobody loves you when you’re down and out.
Love is real, real is love.
The sun is up, the sky is blue It’s beautiful, and so are you.
I don’t know how much money I’ve got. I did ask the accountant how much it came to. I wrote it down on a bit of paper. But I’ve lost the bit of paper.
I feel now at 53 I have grown into a deeper understanding of what a human life is.
You’re born in pain and pain is what we’re in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need.
Imagine there’s no varmints. It isn’t hard to do.
People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine.
We were cowards when we sacked him.
The whole thing died in my mind long before the rumpus started. We used to believe the Beatles myth just as much as the public and we were in love with them just the same way. But we were four individuals who eventually recovered our individualities after being submerged in a myth.
Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don’t understand and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music.
The world went mad and used us as an excuse.
Music’s all right John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.
I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever’s going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.
And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it! Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that – both playing into each other’s noses.
If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It’s no fun being an artist. You know what it’s like, writing, it’s torture.
I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I think it’s realistic, and it’s true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music.
We were always going to dump him when we found a decent drummer.
As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking ‘I’m gonna do that’ but I actually won’t do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much.