“I don’t know whether I’ll reach 40. I don’t know whether I’ll reach 35. I can’t be sure about that. I am bloody serious. I am very, very serious. I didn’t think I’d make 30.”

I don’t like being stuck in one situation, day to day.

Live Aid did feel like one hour’s rehearsal after several years, but to be part of Live Aid was wonderful. It reall was.

When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock & roll record, there’s a hell of a long way rock & roll has to go.

Everything that came later… the roots are all there in the first album.

I like change and I like contrast.

I’m still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I’ve found that I’ve developed fears I never had before… fears of heights, claustrophobia only in cities, though, never in the country.

I’m not a guitarist as far as a technician goes, I just pick it up and play it. Technique doesn’t come into it.

Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you’re playing an instrument that is really hard.

Let’s just say I’m like a ship passing through storms, resting in ports now and then until it’s time to continue the journey. I once told a friend, `I’m just looking for an angel with a broken wing – one that couldn’t fly away.’

There is far more sensitivity in acoustic guitar players than could ever be compared to any synthesizer. That’s a personal point of view but that’s the way I see it. I think that’s what it’s all about. The drive, the fire, the passion – it all comes out on the guitar.

So many people are frightened to take a chance in life and there’s so many chances you have to take.

Music can always be a life-changing experience, for musicians and fans, or at least life-affecting, but it depends on to what degree.

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.

At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. For which service the senate, with complimentary resolutions, enrolled me in its order.

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.

The older you get, the more you should learn to love life and appreciate the beauty that comes with age.

Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Aging is not “lost youth” but a new stage of opportunity and strength.