“The more real you get, the more unreal everything else is.”

If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn’t I don’t care.

Get back to where you once belonged.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

Before Elvis there was nothing.

We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?

Don’t underestimate the importance of happiness. As long as you’re happy, who cares what you do?

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them.

As I play the game of life, I try to make it better each and every day. And when I struggle in the night, The magic of the music seems to light the way.

What I’d have liked would have been the money and the hit records without the fame.

Everything is as important as everything else.

I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!

I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

I remember a time when everybody I loved hated me because I hated them.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

It just seemed to me that the way I played was nice. I could hear it myself.

My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.

Once I get onstage the tension explodes and I’m fine. I’m in another world – in a trance almost, doing what I love best, expressing myself through guitar.

Music is an important part of our culture and record stores play a vital part in keeping the power of music alive.

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

There’s a certain standard in classical music that allows the application of the term “genius,” but you’re treading on thin ice if you start applying it to rock & rollers.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn’t paint.