I shook Alan’s hand and the feeling just grew stronger. It was a bit frustrating. Like when you’re looking for what to say and it’s on the tip of your tongue, but no matter how hard you try, it just keeps eluding you.
The only thing I think I can be accused of about paparazzi is being really naive. I didn't think about it coming along with the job and I never, during my three years at drama school, fantasized about one bit of it.
I've always worked a bit like a cook in a big restaurant, where you've got lots and lots of things laid out and you go and look into one cauldron and you look into the other and you see what's coming to the boil.
The model I came up with in 1964 is just the invention of a rather strange sort of medium that looks the same in all directions and produces a kind of refraction that is a little bit more complicated than that of light in glass or water.
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.
I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.
If you've done a bit of journalism, everyone assumes you must be moving into PR. We're absolutely not becoming a PR agency and we're not turning into Brunswick. We will remain SRU, but we will be owned by the Brunswick Group. It's quite different.
...and said with the softness of repressed violence, 'I am not one to stick his neck out; it is a bit of a reach. I was waiting for the smallest sign that you could love me... I never got it.' --Laertes, Count of Samothrace
I've never taken vocal lessons. My early trumpet training and a fortunate talent for singing has always been enough for me. In the case of rock singing, I've always felt it was better to remain a bit untrained to maintain your individuality.
Somewhere along the way we all go a bit mad. So burn, let go and dive into the horror, because maybe it’s the chaos which helps us find where we belong.
Ill love you with every little bit of everything that has ever consumed me and I will forever love you and forever find you in every life time and so on. Until the stars die out and the universe leaps but even then, my love will remain.
Actors use who they are to be someone else, but I would hate to ever think I'm playing myself. It's imagining being someone else that is the key motivating thing for me. So when people want to know about me, it makes me a bit unnerved.
But I quite like that the public has a very short attention span. If I haven't been on telly for a little bit, I can sense it. People don't take as much notice of you, it's really quite palpable.
I think that having comedy where people talk the way they really talk, when you talk with your friends and whatever, it's really, it's important. Or else you're making stuff that's a little bit watered down and irrelevant.
We could all do with a bit more joy in our lives couldn't we? The wonderful thing is that when we start spreading joy, we begin to actually experience more joy in our lives too!
I am a fraud. I have cobbled together my personality from hundreds of little bits. I am simultaneously the most genuine and the most artificial person you will ever meet.
I wasn't planning on being a guitar player; I was going to be a singer. And I was for a little bit in the Sex Pistols - that is, until we got John Lydon. And then I realized I wasn't really suited as a front guy.
A final of a grand slam is always a matter of details. Maybe a point here, a point there will make the difference. Maybe someone who is a bit more gutsy than the other player, someone who is having a better day than the others.
I just found out last week - my sister told me - that my father had some Beatles records. So I must have heard them quite a bit, but it never registered, really. Now I listen to them with new ears.
I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.
The lives we live are a bit of a straight-hair vs. curly-hair thing. We often want what we don't have. In reality, it's not about better or worse; it's just perception.