“I didn’t really want to be in the lifestyle without the music. And I didn’t want to be in the music without the lifestyle.”

All my dreams came true. There’s not many people that can say that. I mean, most people have to work in a job they hate all their lives, and I can’t imagine that.

I don’t like people’s table manners. That really puts you off eating food.

In every kid’s life, there’s about three or four years when you’re at liberty, and after that, you have to get a job because you’re getting married or you have to support your parents or whatever it is.

I make a very good steak.

My advice wouldn’t be good to anybody. I don’t see it really being greeted with thunderous applause.

I’ve always been alone. I grew up alone. I like it that way. Even when I’m in an arena surrounded by 10,000 people, I’m alone in my head.

I like hard, aggressive music.

I once fell through a hole in the stage.

I learned that if I had known how much of this Nazi memorabilia there was to collect, I never would have started in the first place. It’s crowding me out of my house.

I was never going to be a doctor or a lawyer, so being a musician seemed to be the best of what was on offer.

The thing about death is it’s so final, isn’t it, really? As far as we know… Nobody has ever come back and told us about it.

When you’ve lived the life that I have, you should always expect something like that to crop up. I was not a good boy.

You learn all the best stuff in life after you leave school.

I like touring; I live on the road, more or less.

I wasn’t very worried about the Cold War; I was busy being a musician.

I do quite like that Andrew Lloyd Webber song from ‘Cats.’ What’s it called? ‘Memory?’ Sends shivers up your spine.

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

I will be rich or I will die trying.

Just ’cause something’s popular, it can still be good. In fact, if more people are buying it, then you must be doing something right.

Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.

To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.

It will soon be 25 years from the date of publication of my first research work. That the scientific aspirations kindled by that early work did not suffer extinction has been due entirely to the opportunities provided for me by the great city of Calcutta.

We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong.

It will not be an activity in which all people can participate.