Ian Anderson Quotes

If Jesus Christ came back today, He and I would get into our brown corduroys and go to the nearest jean store and overturn the racks of blue denim.

I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.

Bring me a wheel of oaken wood A rein of polished leather A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky Brewing heavy weather.

It's only the giving that makes you what you are.

A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.

Seek that which within lies waiting to begin the fight of your life that is everyday.

Another tea-time, another day older.

I make up my own mind in light of available facts, with my own experience and a sense of personal ethics.

Why do the faithful have such a will, to believe in something? And call in the name they choose, having chosen nothing.

Touring is what you make it. I like to organise as much as possible myself.

I think it's really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I'm just really reflecting the thoughts and actions around me.

It was instilled in me that the money I was given was not to be lost or spent on any other purpose.

As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.

But the tune ends too soon for us all

It might work with one orchestra, and the next orchestra - the oboe player might not get it. It's different every time, but some of the orchestras do end up enjoying it and having a great time.

I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute.

I feel the audience has a right to know if some of the money they're spending is going to a certain cause, and reassuring them the money is going to where it's supposed to be going.

Our politicians may fail us, but Status Quo always delivers on the promise.

Cafe society is as old as the hills. Starbucks and its imitators are the coffee face of the new man in a hurry.

The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.

I'm really terrible with small children; they're small, noisy, irritating, damp and soggy.

I am not afraid to appear in Israel, although when I come to a place like Israel, I know it's not a picnic by the Thames. I am aware of the tension and it saddens me.

Walk the lines of nature's palm crossed with silver and with gold.

I've always been fond of acoustic music.

Not to be mean about it, but some great rock and rollers, like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, are pretty one-dimensional.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame traditionally has had a management style that is very supportive of American talent, first and foremost, over everything else. And I think that's right and proper.

Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.

I'm all in favor of banks that play their part in community endeavors, private individuals looking for loans, people who want to start up a little business, and that's what banks are for.

I'm not one for Sudoku or crosswords - the thing that fires my little brain is doing tour budgets.

In most cases, my favorite Jethro Tull songs will be determined by how I feel about them as live performance songs, not by the recorded identity.

I'm very much an observer and a conduit of thoughts and ideas.

I kind of like the idea of living a rather ordinary life as a shopkeeper, and I examine that possibility as one of the outcomes of the young Gerald Bostock growing older.

Come with me to the Winged Isle- Northern father's Western child Where the Dance of Ages is playing still through far marches of Acres Wild.

Question all as to their ways and learn the secrets that they hold

Oh father high in heaven - smile down upon your sonWho's busy with his money games - his women and his gun.