“This is the rock ‘n’ roll life, and you had to invent it as you went along. There was no textbook to say how you operate this machinery.”

A painter’s got a canvas. The writer’s got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.

To make a rock’n’roll record, technology is the least important thing.

I am not doing it just for the money or for you. I am doing it for me.

If you’re cool, you don’t know nothing about it. It just is, or you ain’t.

When you’re 20, you can’t imagine being 30. When you’re 30, you can’t imagine being 40. When you’re 40, you can’t imagine being 100.

Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.

The only things Mick and I disagree about is the band, the music and what we do.

I’m not getting old I’m evolving.

Women are a beautiful complication, and I look forward to far more beauties and far more complications.

What is life but playing with time?

It’s one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It’s another thing to play with him.

We all have our own personal laboratories. Life is an experiment, and it’s just a matter of getting the alchemical or chemical combination right.

If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use both feet.

I’m all for a quiet life. I just didn’t get one.

One minute I’m standing at Ronnie Scott’s getting a standing ovation and the next minute, I’m on a marble slab

It’s a privilege just to wake up to a new day.