Top 170 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Weller

Going to college was never an option. I was passionate about music, but how much talent I actually had was another matter.

I really enjoy playing America. I like the audiences there. It's the home of a lot of music I grew up with.

I don't really wanna talk about politics, I'm not clever enough.

I still love playing music. It was all I ever wanted to do, and I got the chance to do it.

The Jam were a good band, however I feel that the Style Council were better. A lot of people I know will disagree with me. Some things we did with The Style Council were misinterpreted or over their heads.

I wear jeans and a T-shirt sometimes. I just like clothes - since the first time I can remember, like age ten or eleven; I was just obsessed with music and clothes. Just like a lot of people in England from my generation.

It is nice to make a record and people like it, and it's encouraging.

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.

If you're into a certain band, you're into the way they dress.

Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.

I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

I think people are just really disappointed, disappointed with Blair as well, who's just like Bush's lapdog. I think everyone's just disillusioned with politics in our country, and it must be the same in your country.

There was a time in my 40s where I thought, oh, it's all over - not just work, but I'm never going to feel young again, I'm always going to feel like I know what's going to happen, I'll know what to expect. Looking back I don't know if that was a midlife crisis, I don't know - but I don't feel that now. There's possibilities. It gets better.

People say you make your best work when you're in despair and all that, and at your lowest - but for me, I think happiness makes you positive, and I think that's a good creative place to write from.

I'm always looking for something. Not in an unhappy way. I just like to try different things. I don't want to be morbid, but I'm not getting any younger.

Being a musician is a noble profession.

I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.

When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do.

I've always had self-belief, though my sensitive side has never been fully appreciated. For every 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight,' I've written an 'English Rose.' People forget.

I get labelled as just being about one thing, but there's lots of layers to what I do.

I never saw myself as a spokesman for a generation. It was all a bit heavy for me. I saw myself as a songwriter and wrote for myself, which I still do, and I also wanted to communicate with my audience.

I am aware of the words 'national treasure' being attached to me occasionally. It just makes me feel old.

I think politicians are so far out of step with what people really want.

The only time I ever really got into rap was back in the early '90s, and bands like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Gang Starr. Musically, they were really interesting. But when hip-hop acts start sampling Sting or Phil Collins, then I just don't get it at all.

People say that if you're still angry at 52, you're not an angry young man, just a grumpy old git.

When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.

I suppose I was much more serious-minded in the '70s and '80s.

I've not had Botox, no.

I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.

I've always liked my clothes, even before I could properly afford them. Clothes for me were never a cloak, a cover. They were how I chose to express myself.

In all honesty, I don't know what one song can change.

I take my hat off to people like the Stones, but it's not for me. I couldn't do that. Jagger is brilliant and long may he rock. I couldn't make my career out of old songs; it would do my head in.

I'm so lucky, I'm just really grateful for what I've got around me - children and my wife and everything else.

In my old age, my mind gets more open, and I listen to so many different types of music and I guess that all reflects in my work.

Most people my age, their musical life ended in the '80s. They stick with what they know. But my tastes are much broader. And I don't want to stop learning.

I hear an album so many times during the course of making it that when I've just finished it, I don't want to hear it again. After you've taken a little bit of time away from it, you can come back to it, which can be scary. I'm happy with 'Sonik Kicks,' man.

Coming from a little suburban town, I wasn't a hip city kid. I was quite the opposite, really. Songs like 'Saturday's Kids' rang a bell for kids all over the country. That song was about the kids I grew up with.

I don't think about what I can't do or what I shouldn't be doing. I just think there are endless possibilities musically, really.

I don't like the royal family, I don't like the establishment, I don't like the civil service.

I'm fine with being thought of as a guitar player, and if I can get any recognition or respect for doing that, that's a pretty good thing for me.

I get labelled as just being about one thing, but there's lots of layers to what I do. It's just lazy journalism, but people start to accept it. If people spent an hour in my car driving around London and listening to the stuff I listen to, they'd hear some interesting stuff.

I'm not big on rap, to be honest. I just don't get it. It's angry people shouting. I like a song, melodies, people singing.

When I got into the Beatles, I must have only been about six or seven but old enough to take notice. We used to have an old radiogram which, for readers of a certain age, was like a big cabinet thing with a record player inside it.

We can't stop a baby in Africa from starving to death... but we can afford enough technology and weaponry to blow the world up a million times over.

Led Zeppelin would never have reformed if he or Jimmy Page were bald.

There is a shy side to me that evaporates when I play on stage, and I like that. I think it's another facet of my character, and I need to do that.

There are so many artists who get to my age that get comfortable and just stick in a groove, and I really don't want to do that.

The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time.

Of course I'm proud of what I've done, but I'm interested in what's next. I want to be relevant now, in 2012. I've done my bit for the past. I've only ever been about what's next, really, and I'll be that way until I keel over.

I want to hear as much music as I possibly can before I leave this mortal coil but it's impossible to hear it all because there's so much of it.

I don't think about what I can't do or what I shouldn't be doing. I just think there are endless possibilities musically, really. And I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

I think I come from a time when all the artists I grew up with and I loved always used to try and push the boundaries, and there doesn't seem so much of that, really.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

I kept the first Rickenbacker I ever got, a little short-scale John Lennon-type model. And I've got a couple of 12-string models, which are really nice, and I've got a Pete Townshend model, which Pete gave me a few years ago. But that's about it.

You can't live a lie. You have to follow your heart.

Nothing wrong with pop!

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don't only listen to the guitar player.

I had a total belief in The Style Council. I meant every word and felt every action.

I want to see where and how far I can go as an artist. I look back and see what I've done, and I want to do as much as I can in my lifetime. I love doing it. If I didn't have that passion or love for it, I wouldn't do it.