Top 308 Quotes & Sayings by Paul McCartney - Page 5

I'm trying to do it honestly and genuinely; if some of it's not working to your taste, what can I say?

The music publishing I own is fabulous recording.

My stepmother sold my birth certificate and someone asked why I didn't buy it back. I don't know, really. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It was mine. It cost me nothing and suddenly I had to buy it back.

Most people don't know that I invented the selfie.

I would quite like to have been a 1920s writer.

In Liverpool we'd only done one-hour sessions. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours. We played very loud, bang, bang, all the time. The Germans loved it.

I guess the ultimate luxury professionally is to be able to change your direction, to work in another medium.

Personal differences, musical differences, business differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family.

I am quite happy that the Beatles came and went. There is even a sort of glory in not having it go on forever. There is a complete body of work that went from A to Z and it is all pretty damn good stuff. The one thing I am particularly proud of is that nearly every single bit of it has some good message. I feel fortunate when I look back. Life is not easy, but I've been very lucky - and I'm touching wood as I say that.

It's as serious as anyone ever gets, you know. It's just words. It's just good poetry.

The long and winding road that leads to your door / Will never disappear, / I've seen that road before it always leads me here, / Leads me to your door.

I just start singing some words with a tune. I don't ever write a song thinking, Now I'll write a song about... .

Late at night when the wind is still I'll come flying through your door, And you'll know what love is for. I am a bluebird, I'm a bluebird...

And Jet, I thought the Major was a lady suffragette.

It's like there was me, then the Beatles phase, and now I'm me again.

When two great saints meet, it's a humbling experience.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

It was a period when they used to read into our lyrics a lot, used to think there was more in them than there was.

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony, side by side on my keyboard piano, oh Lord, why don't we?

Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.

We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us.

My record producer [David Kahne] said the major record labels these days are like dinosaurs sitting around discussing the asteroid. They know it's going to hit. They don't know when, they don't know where it's coming from. But it's sort of hit already. With iTunes, and all of that.

There will be no wardrobe malfunction with me. I can promise you that.... I have nothing I will be exposing or taking off.

Love is a robber and he lives within your eyes.

I did study Shakespeare, that was sort of my thing; I got a Literature A-level, which is my only claim to academic fame.

The strange thing is, we never owned our own publishing; it was always getting bought and sold.

We would normally play it to Cynthia or whoever was around

Lady Madonna lying on the bed Listen to the music playing in your head.

I think a domestic situation can change you and your attitudes. I suppose if you did get a bit content, then you might not write savage lyrics.

Every love song I write is for Linda.

It comes in handy in situations like that. People always expect you to be riding around in stretch limousines all the time, but I will sometimes take public transportation if it's convenient, and it does surprise people, you see the heads turn.

If there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.

George Harrison and John Lennon were the ones most against touring ... I'd been trying to say ..Ah, tourings good and it keeps us sharp .. but finally I agreed with them

For you know that it's a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.

When a war is over I think it's a cowardly thing to leave the war behind you in minefields that hit women and children and the most vulnerable. Imagine the war is finished and you go to work and there are snipers shooting at you. Imagine taking your kids to the beach and you find that the beach is blowing up beneath you. Like there's nowhere safe.

I'm not really comfortable singing without accompanying myself on stage - I'm not used to it.

I am not religious, but I am spiritual.

I do have a spongelike ear or mentality or whatever you call it, but it's probably a bit subconscious.

John could write a mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a happy childhood.

There's nothing bigger than being asked to perform at the Super Bowl.

I think the idea of getting out of a traffic jam and getting out of work each week and going and doing all this stuff would be really exhausting.

The ring at the end of my nose makes me look rather pretty.

I'm often reading a magazine and hearing about someone's new record, and I think: "Oh, boy, that's gonna be better than me". It's a very common thing.

My brother's researched our early family history. He found a letter from a fella who said he used to be in love with my mum.

If you're using your imagination, you tend to look into the past for ideas.

It's nice to have a little bit of art to fall back on.

At the office where the paper grows, she takes a break, drinks another coffee, and she finds it hard to stay awake. It's just another day.

I can't manage without homeopathy. In fact, I never go anywhere without homeopathic remedies.

As far as art's concerned, I probably like modern art more than traditional art.

That's not really important what religion people are attached to, because by the same argument I have a lot of Christian friends and Moslem friends. It's just happened that I do have a lot of relatives and friends who are Jewish.

I didn't earn that much in record royalties. You've only got to look at my sales in 1980 to figure that one out.

Many years ago I was fishing, and as I was reeling in the poor fish, I realised, 'I am killing him - all for the passing pleasure it brings me'. Something inside me clicked. I realised as I watched him fight for breath that his life was as important to him as mine is to me.

I think when you're making an album, as the songs are piling up, one of the good things about it is that you will often write the song that you need.

I'm mad, you know? I don't think of retiring at all.

You're always looking at last year, or 10 years ago, or your school days, or your teenage years, your formative years. Because that's exactly what they are, they're your formative years.

I'm not into, Hey, what's your sign? or any of that. But I don't know how I got here, and I don't know how I write songs. I don't know why I breathe.

Bach was so mathematical and I liked this idea that you could have one instrument going, 'One, two, three, four', and then you have another instrument going, [double time] 'One, two, three four', and another instrument going, [doubled again] 'One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four', so you could add twos and fours and eighths, and that happens a lot in Bach.

People think once you get famous and rich you move out of the public sphere and you have nothing left to write about. I've heard that - Bruce Springsteen was this real street boy, now he's got this big house. How does that compute? If you don't look at the material side of someone's life, if you look at more the emotional side, there's always a wealth of stuff to write about.

We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us. We've been through a lot and we've reached a stage where we really value life.

If I ever get out of here, thought of giving it all away to a registered charity.