“By the time we made “Abbey Road”, John and I were openly critical of each other’s music, and I felt John wasn’t much interested in performing anything he hadn’t written himself.”

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.

Reading is performance. The reader–the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk–performs the work.

I learned that i was either crazy in love with you, or putting on the best performance of my life.’ -nora (pg 263)

Most performers take themselves too seriously. They forget there is a difference between the characters they play on the screen or stage and themselves, but the public doesn’t forget there is a difference. They see how silly it is if you try to be the same person all the time.

Excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over again. You can hit a half-court shot once. That’s just the luck of the draw. If you consistently do it… that’s excellence.

How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?

Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

The whole wrestling art, it’s a whole form, is performance, and that’s what makes it so exciting to do.