“The more you learn about everything, the more you learn that everything’s fixed not in your favour.”

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.

I was in the Rockin’ Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain.

Touring is too much fun to stop.

We was living in squats in Battersea when we started with Motorhead. And we lived with the Hell’s Angels in this flat. They were always around.

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n’ roll – that was music to me. Everything else was boring.

The hippie era was a wonderful time because we still believed we could make the world a better place.

In your twenties, you think you are immortal. In your thirties, you hope you are immortal.

Nobody in the world could possibly be as mean as I look, could they?

I don’t really have the voice for love songs, do I?

I’m not a poker player; I play slot machines.

What I am very disturbed about is this trend of everything happening faster and faster and faster and there being more and more general noise in the world, and less and less time for quiet reflection on who we are, and where we’re going.

A producer has to know all about everything from set-building to costumes to acting.

Not everything is going to be successful. To strive for that is really naive. You just do the best you can do.

I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don’t believe there’s a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.

I grew up with nothing, so whenever I got to where I could have something I felt like I needed to have everything I couldn’t have when I was young.

Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.

Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He’s hardcore to play because he’s displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.

How then shall we live? Let us live lightly as a feather. How much shall we give? Let us give everything, together One heart, one mind, all humankind… I volunteer.