“You don’t find geniuses in street musicians, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t be really good.”

So far I’ve been very, very fortunate because it appears that people like to hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position can a musician be in?

There’s too many good musicians around for the music around for the business to be sagging.

Seeing people’s faces, really getting off on them, makes me incredibly happy. Genuinely.

I guess the solo from ‘Achilles Last Stand’ is in the same tradition as the solo from ‘Stairway to Heaven’ It is on that level to me.

Sometimes, I must admit, I’d like to have a second guitarist onstage with me, but it wouldn’t look right. I’d like to play for another 20 years, but I don’t know. I just can’t see it happening. I don’t know why. It’s a certain foreboding. A funny feeling. Vultures.

The gut-strung guitar, the classical guitar, that is a whole different world on its own. When you think what the guitar can do and what every individual player does with a guitar, everyone has their own identity coming through the guitar.

I don’t feel I have to top myself at all.

I don’t go walking into things blind.

I can listen to all different sorts of music. I don’t really care about The Next Big Thing.

I really don’t like showing people how I play things; it’s a little embarrassing because it always looks so simple to me.

There’s always music that moves me. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s within the parenthesis of rock or blues, or whatever. It’s usually far more reaching than that. It can be in many different genres.

I don’t care what critics and other people think.

I’m attracted by the unknown, but I take precautions.

But to put out a greatest hits on one CD was totally impossible, I just couldn’t do it. The best compromise was to put out two CDs – Early Days – which is what it is – and Latter Days.

I’m pretty optimistic about the future of rock… it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.

Right from the first time we went to America in 1968, Led Zeppelin was a word-of-mouth thing. You can’t really compare it to how it is today.

Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, but you can find a reason to keep going no matter what happens.

Trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it.

It’s beautiful to find beauty in others but when it comes to you, you ending up finding only faults.

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.

Relationships are like dances in which people try to find whatever happens to be the mutual rhythm in their lives.

You start believing in god when the devil finds you.