“There’s nothing as glamorous to me as a record store.”

Transcendental Meditation gives me an island of calm in the midst of so much turbulence.

Sadness isn’t sadness. It’s happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They’re balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It’s life that’s jumped off a tall cliff.

You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.

None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.

I realized marvelling at nature was a deep pleasure of mine.

The thing you must remember is that I’m the Number One John Lennon fan. I love him to this day and I always did love him

So, if I’m cooking, I’ll be steaming vegetables, making some nice salad, that kind of stuff.

Look, people are allowed their own opinions and they don’t always coincide with yours. As an artist you just have to keep plugging on.

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better. It’s a little better all the time.

There are only four people who knew what the Beatles were about anyway.

It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ I thought, this is it.

Having a beard is natural. When you think about it, shaving it off is quite weird.

You see, my mother was a district nurse until she died when I was 14, and we used to move from time to time because of her work.

She is the rock ‘n’ roll queen. Weirdly enough, that is one of the things her reign will be remembered for. Queen Elizabeth I, we remember Raleigh; Queen Elizabeth II it’s gonna be the Beatles.

There is good and bad in everyone.

When I sit down to write a song, it’s a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I’m about to do.

I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

I think that’s what happened to the record business when ‘Napster’ came around. The industry rejected what was happening instead of accepting it as change.

Let’s not forget, art can sell. You ain’t gotta front all the time on your records.

When I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles.

No one’s promised anything. You could have the biggest record on radio and sell no records.

History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.

Whatever your years, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.