Paul McCartney

I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course.

I hate the idea of success robbing you of your private life.

Putting two songs together, I've always loved that trick when it works.

I can take pot or leave it. I got busted in Japan for it. I was nine days without it and there wasn't a hint of withdrawal nothing.

But you know as a kid I would have thought of a vegetarian as a wimp.

And I loved Fats Waller. I love his instrumental abilities his vocal abilities and his sense of humor.

I saw that Meryl Streep said 'I just want to do my job well'. And really, that's all I'm ever trying to do.

I like the idea that people hear my stuff and if it's commercially successful that's a good sign that it's being heard.

I think I always had a musicality and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.

I think the pop industry is still a young man's game.

My old school in Liverpool is now a performing-arts school and I kind of teach there - I use the word lightly - but I go there and talk to students.

I can't deal with the press, I hate all those Beatles questions.

George wrote Taxman and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money.

I have not practiced how to be a singer without an instrument.

Somewhere down the line everyone must pay for their misdeeds.

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

Somebody said to me 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say 'Now let's write a swimming pool.'

I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff but I began to meet younger kids not kids from my Beatle generation who would say We really love this song.

My dad bless him was a musician. And his dad had thought that his music was rubbish.

I was still 15 when I met John Lennon at a village fete in Woolton in Liverpool.

I never really got on that well with Yoko anyway. Strangely enough I only started to get to know her after John's death.

Think globally act locally.

She is the rock 'n' roll queen. Weirdly enough that is one of the things her reign will be remembered for. Queen Elizabeth I we remember Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth II it's gonna be the Beatles.

I'm not religious but I'm very spiritual.

I knew the words to 25 rock songs so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti that got me in. That was my audition.

I feel that if I said anything about John I would have to sit here for five days and say it all. Or I don't want to say anything.

John's time and effort were in the main spent on pretty honorable stuff. As for the other side well nobody's perfect nobody's Jesus. And look what they did to him.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be a vegetarian.

I used to think that anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn't weird at all and it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.

Microphones are just like people if you shout at them they get scared.

When we were starting off as kids just the idea of maybe going to do this as a living instead of getting what we thought was going to be a boring job was exciting.

Look people are allowed their own opinions and they don't always coincide with yours. As an artist you just have to keep plugging on.

To keep the record straight it wasn't always John and Yoko. We've all accused one another of various business things, we tend to be pretty paranoid by now as you can imagine. There's a lot of money involved.

We were pretty good mates until the Beatles started to split up and Yoko came into it. It was more like old army buddies splitting up on account of wedding bells.

We were a savage little lot Liverpool kids not pacifist or vegetarian or anything. But I feel I've gone beyond that and that it was immature to be so prejudiced and believe in all the stereotypes.

Looking back I think I was always musical. My dad was very musical and I think my mom was musical.

Where I come from you don't really talk about how much you're earning. Those things are private. My dad never told my mum how much he was earning. I'm certainly not going to tell the world. I'm doing well.

I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.

I got my first guitar when I was 15 and I just used to fool about with it more or less as time went by though I got more interested.

One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.

I don't ever try to make a serious social comment.

I look a lot busier than I am as I'm actually a rather sporadic random person and I'll play a few gigs and then disappear for a while.

My so-called career is a haphazard thing.

I never look forward because I have no idea about how any of it happened to getting here. I've no idea how the next five years are going to be.

It's also not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources.

Why would I retire? Sit at home and watch TV? No thanks. I'd rather be out playing.

I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader, he was the quickest wit and the smartest.

None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.

When you first get money you buy all these things so no one thinks you're mean and you spread it around. You get a chauffeur and you find yourself thrown around the back of this car and you think I was happier when I had my own little car! I could drive myself!

I don't work at being ordinary.

It's time to end the cruel slaughter of whales and leave these magnificent creatures alone.

I think people who create and write it actually does flow-just flows from into their head into their hand and they write it down. It's simple.

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.

If children are studying the 20th century I'm in their text books.

Love is all you need.

The Stones also still have a huge following. Mick Jagger leaps around like a crazy dude. And Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts are playing great too.

Someone like John would want to end the Beatle period and start the Yoko period. He wouldn't like either to interfere with the other.

I had this song called 'Helter Skelter' which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that 'cuz I like noise.

I'm a pretty hands-on dad and make the most of my custody. I take care of my little one whenever I can and she determines what I can do and where I can do it.

It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard "Heartbreak Hotel" I thought this is it.

I don't take me seriously. If we get some giggles I don't mind.

I've got to admit it's getting better. It's a little better all the time.

Being in the audience actually looks like quite a lot of fun.

But with writers there's nothing wrong with melancholy. It's an important color in writing.

Buy buy says the sign in the shop window, Why why says the junk in the yard.

George Martin he's very good at a very sort of lush sweet arrangement.

Lyricists play with words.

There are only four people who knew what the Beatles were about anyway.

You see my mother was a district nurse until she died when I was 14 and we used to move from time to time because of her work.

My dad was a particularly polite kind of guy very courteous.

So if I'm cooking I'll be steaming vegetables making some nice salad that kind of stuff.

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

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.