“The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.”

I never really studied business in school. I kind of wish I had, but how boring is that?

Thank you for leaving us alone but giving us enough attention to boost our egos.

I prefer to live in a rented house. No ties. Nothing around my neck. Just the minimum kind of bare comforts of home.

The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early ’60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress.

I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I’m tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down.

You can’t be jealous and be a leader.

I don’t think that being in a full-time relationship is necessarily for everybody all of the time. It’s not necessarily some state of grace.

You don’t always do the same things you’ve done the night before. That’s what makes playing live so interesting as opposed to being in the studio.

Time is on my side, yes it is.

I don’t want to be singing Satisfaction when I’m 40.

I, personally, have a lot of energy, so I don’t see it as an immediate problem.

Any performer is one person privately and then he’s another person when he steps on the stage.

I came into music just because I wanted the bread. It’s true. I looked around and this seemed like the only way I was going to get the kind of bread I wanted.

It’s all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back.

There’s no absolutes in life – only vodka.

You can’t always get what you want.

There’s nothing wrong with having your goals really high and trying to achieve them. That’s the fun part. You may come up short. I’ve come up short on a lot on my goals, but it’s always fun to try and achieve them.

Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

When I went to college, as much as my parents emphasized academic achievement, they emphasized marriage even more. They told me that the most eligible women marry young to get a ‘good man’ before they are all taken.

The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies. Most leadership positions are held by men, so women don’t expect to achieve them, and that becomes one of the reasons they don’t.

I think I can improve a lot. I think I can get a lot better. I feel like there’s much, much more I can do.

I’m not a celebrity. I’m just the same Simone. I just have two Olympic Gold medals now.

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.