“One of the great things about songwrighting; it’s not an intellectual experience.”

I don’t wave a flag for anything. I’m a musician.

I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor . Everything was there in his playing – the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song.

If you are going to get wasted, then get wasted elegantly.

I haven’t stopped smoking; anything.

I read the Bible sometimes, but it bores me to death. I just want to know what other people find so bloody fascinating.

I consider my job [being a musician] is to have a little idea and nurture it and put it in some form that everybody else can understand and then sort of pass it on. It’s really a passing through. In other words, you receive and you transmit.

Everybody thinks you reach a certain age and you’re a grownup, but it’s not true. Nobody grows up until the day they croak.

Poison’s not bad. It’s a matter of how much.

I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records.

Love has sold more songs than you’ve had hot dinners.

Guitar is easy, all it takes is 5 fingers, 6 strings and 1 a**hole.

Preaching is tax free. Very little to do with God, a lot to do with money.

I never sleep alone. If there is no one to sleep next to, I’ll sleep next to a stuffed animal. It makes me feel secure and safe. It’s a little embarrassing to admit it; I’m an old man now. It’s important to me though.

True friends. Hardest thing to find, but you never look for them – they found you ; you just grow into each other

Let me be clear about this. I don’t have a drug problem. I have a police problem.

You don’t find a style. A style finds you.

I think Clapton is brilliant. He’s the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.

Holdsworth is so damned good that I can’t cop anything. I can’t understand what he’s doing. I’ve got to do this [does two-hand tapping], whereas he’ll do it with one hand.

No one predicts the future. No one tries to.

What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.

Not to be born surpasses all reckoning. The next best thing by far, when one has been born is to go back as swiftly as possible whence one came.

God lets everything happen for a reason. It’s all a learning process, and you have to go from one level to another.

If all men were to bring their miseries together in one place, most would be glad to take each his own home again rather than take a portion out of the common stock.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.