“My arrest was on every bloody TV set. The other prisoners all knew who I was and asked me to sing.”

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them into criminals is wrong. It’s when you’re in jail you really become a criminal.

I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity. To see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.

If you love your life, everybody will love you too.

I can’t manage without homeopathy. In fact, I never go anywhere without homeopathic remedies. I often make use of them.

There’s nothing as glamorous to me as a record store.

The willow turns his back on inclement weather. And if he can do it, we can do it.

The interesting thing about the Beatles was: The music was one thing, but we kind of symbolized a certain kind of freedom at a time when people of our generation were just growing up and just becoming adults.

It’s like if you’re an astronaut and you’ve been to the moon, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?

Hamburg totally wrecked us. I remember getting home to England and my dad thought I was half-dead. I looked like a skeleton, I hadn’t noticed the change, I’d been having such a ball!

I think the French girls are fabulous.

Somewhere down the line everyone must pay for their misdeeds.

I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.

It’s a powerful thing hearing your friend on a very beautiful song.

But with writers, there’s nothing wrong with melancholy. It’s an important color in writing.

But you know, as a kid I would have thought of a vegetarian as a wimp.

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?

I know it won’t be eight medals again. If you want to compare me to that, that’s your decision, not mine. I’m going out there to try to accomplish the things that I have in my mind and in my heart.

A wet spot on the floor kind of put a scare in myself, so you never know inside those lines what might happen.

I’ve been in that situation three or four times before where I’m losing the fight – the fight seems almost over with – and I knew I had to finish him and stop playing possum as much.

It would be cool to let people know that it doesn’t matter what kind of background you have in your past, that you can still make something out of your life.

Believing that no one is better than the other. You know I grew up in the South. My senior year there was a very big racial tension.

I think there is a sense of ownership in knowing, isn’t there? You let people in, and they claim parts of you-they fly their flag over uncharted territory and from then onward-you cease to belong wholly to yourself.

My brother and I ended up being known for our distance, but we had no idea how far we could hit the ball because we hit it the same, and all of a sudden.