Without arts programmes there’s only reality TV, and reality TV needs the arts to show it what reality is.
I’m not going to throw away the hand of friendship to suit 100 Trotskyites in Glasgow.
Nothing means anything here. When they pull down an outstanding building, no one objects. Oh, maybe there’s a wee protest from some collectors or something who take a picture of it before it vanishes.
The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.
I love fishing. It’s transcendental meditation with a punchline.
I decided to stop drinking while it was still my idea.
I spent the whole time battering people I liked and singing with my arm round people I loathed.
For me, it’s about the desire to win. My audience becomes a crowd of wild animals and I have to be the lion-tamer or be eaten.
In Mexico, everything on the menu is the same dish. The only difference is the way it’s folded.
I like Dali and Magritte. I also like the Scottish artist John Byrne, another surrealist.
Don’t vote, it only encourages them.
I loathe hecklers. I haven’t got a good syllable to say. When you come out of the club circuit and into the concert hall, they should be gone. There’s an element of manners that should tell you that the ticket is dear and it’s a different venue.
Killing a guy and stealing his wife and child isn’t too nice a thing to do.
The strangest thing is at tea breaks, or coffee breaks or lunch, you forget you’re a zombie. And you’re talking about politics to somebody at the table and you forget that you have a bullet hole in your forehead.
I just believe in the movie. I don’t care what the book was like. I don’t care what the previous film was like or other films were like. I care only about the script I’ve got.
People often say that football and boxing are the ways out of the working class and they are your ticket out of that kind of life, if you happen to want to leave it. But, for me, the library is the key. That is where the escape tunnel is. All of the knowledge in the world is there. The great brains of the world are at your fingertips.
There is this viewpoint that if you have come from the working class you have come from nothing, whereas the middle and upper classes are something, and I don’t hold with that opinion. I think the working class is something. It is everything. They are the builders of society, and without them the whole house falls down.
Even though everybody knows that when you light up a cigarette God takes an hour off your life and gives it to Keith Richards.
My stories are not story shaped, they’re me shaped.
Blessed are those who yodel – for they shall never be troubled by offers of work.
I hope I’ve shown a few disbelievers that they should never discount those they think are different, disorganised or distractible.