Top 68 Quotes & Sayings by Bruce Dickinson

I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it's evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams, and I work in a way that has more control.

I'm very good at daydreaming. Ask any of my schoolteachers.

I don't have interns. I don't have a manager. I don't have assistants. I don't have a secretary. I can't figure out Outlook Express. I'm the worst person in the world answering e-mails, and my phone is probably the oldest, most battered phone you can find. So I just talk to people.

Engineering stimulates the mind.

If you really want to annoy me, ask me when I'm going to retire from rock n' roll.

With the Internet, bands can come and go every five minutes and the music looks disposable.

Iron Maiden is an institution, and I'm delighted that I'm involved in it, but there was a time that I wasn't delighted so I quit.

Well, it's a nice quiet time for Iron Maiden, and I'll be releasing a new solo album next year, so this is a really good time for the managing out my solo career, which is quite well.

My son is in a band, and he's a singer, and his vocals... they're screaming-growling stuff... and he's got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I'm, like, 'Hats off to you.'

I'm not going to do any more solo touring.

In my teenage years I was put off the idea of a career in flying, because I'd convinced myself that you had to be a boffin with degrees in maths and physics, which were my weakest subjects.

Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.

There are a lot of stuff on the record that I am thinking is generic but actually it is just as good as everybody else who is putting stuff out at the time.

The joke in aviation is, 'If you want to make a million, you'd better start with £10m.'

There are a lot of bands using self-abuse as a marketing gimmick.

Don't ask me to put up a shelf, but I love engineering.

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

Business is just about enabling human beings, nothing more, nothing less. Businesses need to recognize this fundamental fact.

Life on the road can get a little one-dimensional. I didn't want to reach 40 and have to say all I'd done was look out the window of a tour bus and get drunk.

Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers.

A guy called Arthur Brown... was a big influence of mine... and also Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull.

If it all just happens like this for the rest of my life, it's going to be one endless Groundhog Day. I determined that I was not prepared to submit to this regime, so I thought I had to do something about it.

Engineering stimulates the mind. Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things. When the schools can offer that, you'll have an engineer for life.

One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.

If heavy metal bands ruled the world, we'd be a lot better off.

Life is too short to do the things you don't love doing.

My dad always told me, 'I don't care what you do. Just aim to be the best at it. Even if it's the world's best window cleaner.'

Teachers need to be more inspirational. But it's also up to engineering to make itself more interesting.

The celebrity thing, I mean, Lindsay Lohan - what's she for? I look at that and throw my hands up in despair.

Well, yeah, sometimes I get a little too creative.

If your only arbiter of anything is money, really you should... go and rob banks.

I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.

When you cut human beings down to size, we're really quite simple creatures; food, shelter, warmth, light, heat and you build it up from there really until you finally go Gucci shoes or whatever it is or whatever your consumer desires are. All those desires are ultimately, they're about gratification.

The mystical poetry of William Blake's artwork also forms the basis for the album cover.

Major labels blow all their money massively and blame it on the band.

I'm trying to be as green as I can. As an airline pilot, I have a carbon footprint that's a size 10, so it's pretty hard.

Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things.

The more guitars we have onstage the better, as I'm concerned.

Apart from death and taxes, the one thing that's certain in this life is that I'll never be a fashion icon.

South Wales is a hub of aviation.

I've had a bit of experience at lots and lots of different arenas as it were, some of them completely creative, some of them quite technical. The interesting thing is, is that I found that the technical arenas actually are also very creative or can be very creative.

I think the best way to find out about something is to try to do it to the max. A lot of people take up a hobby or sport and then find an excuse not to carry on with it. Once I start something, I won't stop until I'm as good at it as I'll ever be.

My aim as a frontman is always to try and shrink the venue, if you can, to turn that football stadium into the world's smallest club. At least you have to try.

I find that fencing and training give me more stamina and help me deal with the craziness of being on the road so much.

When I write with Maiden, then I write only with the guys in Maiden, we don't do songs from outside people.

I shall refract myself, yes, I shall no longer be known as the prism.

I was an accident - my mum was only 16 when she had me.

Best two rock voices I've heard in a last few years both have been from grunge bands: it's Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.

I am taking a break, but not a huge break because the Maiden record is actually happening right now, and I am recording it as we speak, well not right as we speak, but close.

A few of these interviews have gone slightly awry, because every now and again there has been the odd conflict of interest between interviews because of the Iron Maiden record, and I am a bit long-winded.

I do like Marylin Manson, actually. I think, he's very talented and he did make some great music.

We're better than Metallica. We're better musicians, better players. Put it this way, they can try to walk onstage after an Iron Maiden show if they want.

Some of Eminem's rap songs kind of have the teenage love songs like the fifties love songs. It's kind of like domestic drama set to music. He is really good storyteller.

Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change

You can sail in the desert with a ship of fools. You can smuggle in Moses and his book of rules. But you can't take a mother and give her back her son. What kind of freedom is bought with a gun? People like to build their prison walls when they're afraid to look inside... a thousand points of light are the muzzle flashes in the night. And the freedoms you profess to hold won't bring the dead back from the cold.

Fly, on your way, like an eagle / Fly as high as the Sun.

When I was in employment as a regular line pilot, I used to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden. I got lucky - they let me off

There are basically two categories of music: Metal and bullshit.

My son is in a band, and he’s a singer, and his vocals … they’re screaming-growling stuff … and he’s got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I’m, like, “Hats off to you.”

Anybody auditions for X-Factor it's because they want to be famous, not because they are artists.