“My mum died when I was 14. That is a kind of strange age to lose a mother. John lost his mum when he was 17.”

A hundred years from now, people will listen to the music of the Beatles the same way we listen to Mozart.

I like most kinds of music. So I haven’t got a bag, as they say. Except the big black one in the hall outside.

When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that’s why I can’t eat it. Simple as that.

The best thing I ever saw was a man who loved his wife.

Trumpets are a bit more adventurous; they’re drunk! Trumpeters are generally drunk. It wets their whistle.

I’m only 49 years old. I’m still in the middle of this whole thing. I don’t feel like it’s finished at all. I’m still planning to write better songs.

I think [Transcendental Meditation] is what people need. They don’t need high minded talk, they need results.

Be cool and you’ll be alright. That’s rock & roll religion.

There will be an answer. Let it be.

Every time I felt low, I just put on an Elvis record and I’d feel great, beautiful.

Painting is a magical process that I like, where you conjure something out of nothing; you get a little idea that leads you through. You can go into a trance while you’re doing it, so it’s a nice contrast to real life.

And what’s the point of changing when I’m happy as I am?

At the end of the Beatles, I really was done in for the first time in my life. Until then, I really was a kind of cocky sod.

I realize now that taking drugs was like taking an aspirin without having a headache.

When you got a job to do, you got to do it well. You gotta give the other fellow hell.

Animation is not just for children – it’s also for adults who take drugs.

Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

When I’m 19, I’ll still be living with my mom, but I’m going to be doing music and acting. I can picture it really vividly.

I’m amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I’m so lucky, though my mum always says, ‘You make your own luck.’

I’ve been through it all, baby, I’m mother courage.

A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, or what you do in your life, you never stop needing your mom.

Without my mother’s ambition, her drive, I doubt that on my own I would have pushed myself out of Pozzuoli and into the frightening world that was faraway Rome.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.