John and I would go and have a couple of quiet beers, just to sit down and chew the fat. And he'd talk about Cynthia and how much he missed her

I'm happier than I would have been with the Beatles.

We were at our best when we were playing in the dance halls of Liverpool and Hamburg. The world never saw that.

The first one I actually met was George Harrison.

Liverpool was an industrial town, a poor town. The people fought hard for what they wanted to achieve and there was a hunger there, and that hunger has remained with the musicians.

Anyone who knows the history of the Pete Best Band or the Combo, we were on the verge of breaking in in America. In the mid-'60s, I had great songwriters; we wrote some great stuff.

When I came back into show business in '88 after spending 20-odd years in the civil service, it wasn't planned.

It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it.

If a deadly snake slithering around in a pre-school bit a child, would you box it up for a month as punishment, and then release it to prey upon the children once again?

I never said anything that was unprintable. Never said anything just for the sake of being startling.

About the time we get old enough to be as wicked as we want to be, we don't want to be so very wicked after all.

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

In the light we can see what is and what is not. We know what is right and what is inappropriate.

Time is so fleeting that if we do not remember God in our youth, age may find us incapable of thinking of him.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

Permit no man to be a king and permit also no man to be a slave!

We can teach from our experience, but we cannot teach experience.