Popular Quotes Through Time

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.

Just before I record, I go buy a few albums to see what people are doing. Whether they have improved any, or whether anything happened. And nothing's really happened. There's a lot of great guitarists and musicians around, but nothing's happening, you know.

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.

People are afraid of Beatle music. They are still afraid of my songs. Because they got that big image thing: You can't do a Beatle number... You can't touch a Lennon song; only Lennon can do it... It's garbage! Anybody can do anything. A few people in the past have done Beatle songs. But in general they feel you can't touch them. And there are so many good singles that the Beatles wrote that were never released. Why don't people do them? It's good for me; it's good for Paul. It's good for all of us.

All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme. Try to tell the kids in the Seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just the Beatles redone. There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees.

I think Mick [Jagger] got jealous. I was always very respectful about Mick and the Stones but he said a lot of tarty things about the Beatles, which I am hurt by. I'd like to just list what we did and what the Stones did two months after on every f***king album... he imitates us.

I've got used to the fact-just about- that whatever I do is going to be compared to the other Beatles. If I took up ballet dancing, my ballet dancing would be compared with Paul's bowling.

Carrying the Beatles or the '60s dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion.

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the '60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another.

I could still be forgotten when I'm dead. I don't really care what happens when I'm dead.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity.