The cultural mix that's happened in the United States is wonderful! Funny enough, one of the most wonderful things about it is that there is no American race.

Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.

I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.

I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion.

I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.

I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

Apparently officers are not ‘men’. Officers are ‘officers’.

For me able to do the records I want to do and not have to worry about this producer or that producer or that trend, I'm not really interested in that.

I'm Iranian and no matter what I do, I'm dealing with politics because especially my music, that it's a music that talks about peace, love, unity.

I think a woman looks best in a sari.

Cleaning up the country cannot be the sole responsibility of sweepers. Do citizens have no role in this? We have to change this mindset.

As the saying goes, 'you don't fix something if it isn't broken'

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world

You are wonderful, Father.""I'm more than wonderful, how dare you insult me.

Thou art a slave, whom fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd; but bred a dog.