“I look for ambiguity when I’m writing because life is ambiguous.”

Why would you want to be anything else if you’re Mick Jagger?

I was number 1 on the who’s likely to die list for 10 years. I was really disappointed when I fell off that list.

My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.

And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You’ve got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.

Music works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in you have no idea what it can do to you.

I don’t regret nothing.

What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It’s the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician: ‘He passed it on.’

I never thought I was wasted, but I probably was.

No broken hearts, no broken necks.

The rock’s easy, but the roll is another thing.

To me, the main thing about living on this planet is to know who the hell you are and be real about it. That’s the reason I’m still alive.

I don’t trust doctors. It’s not to say there ain’t some good ones, but on a general level, no, I wouldn’t trust ’em at all.

To me, life is a wild animal. You hope to deal with it when it leaps at you.

To me, my biggest fear is getting a big head, and that is when I get the hammer. Because it’s very easy in this game to believe you’re something special.

Retire? I can’t spell the word. I’d play in a wheelchair.

I’ve never had my hair cut by anybody, I do it all myself.