"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." "I figure I've probably got a better chance of coming up with a good Paul McCartney song than Oasis has." (on his LSD experience) "It's like taking an aspirin without having a headache." "I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual." "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.'" (regarding his 10-day prison stay after arrest for cannabis posession at Tokyo's Narita Airport - Jan 6th, 1980) "It was pretty rough. Just a thin matress on the floor. I had to wash using water from the toilet cistern. I had to share a bath with a bloke who was in for murder. I was afraid to take my suit off in case I got raped. But I'd seen all those prisoner- of-war movies and I knew you had to keep your spirits up. So I'd organise sing- songs with other prisoners." "I don't take me seriously. If we get some giggles, I don't mind." "We didn't all get into music for a job! We got into music to avoid a job, in truth - and get lots of girls." "I've seen those famous Nixon transcripts where Elvis actually starts to try to shop us - The Beatles! He's in the transcript saying - to Richard Nixon, of all people - 'Well, sir, these Beatles: they're very un-American and they take drugs.' I felt a bit betrayed by that, I must say. The great joke is that we were taking drugs, and look what happened to him. He was caught on the toilet full of them! It was sad; but I still love him, particularly in his early period. He was very influential on me." "I don't take any notice of her. She's John's wife so I have to respect her for that, but I don't think she's the brightest of buttons. She's said some particularly daft things in her time. Her life is dedicated to putting me down but I attempt very strongly not to put her down." [About Yoko Ono] "You try to concentrate on the lyrics, the music, the melody, and putting it all together, and there's a sign... and half of you is saying "ignore it", but the other half is saying "read it, go ahead." "My grandmother saw you at Candlestick." That says it all."(referring to sign in the audience) "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." "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." "The two of us were on fire every time we sat down to write." "When we were kids, George and I used to hang out and we had, we had one little party piece which was to show that we weren't stupid, so we used to do this thing by Bach that was our own little version of it, and we got it wrong," "Maybe our government went in too fast with the Americans. It would have been better if the UN had been together. Now it's become very bloody with Iraq, it's very difficult. If someone came to my house and blew it up, I wouldn't just want to sit there and say thank you. I'd be angry like I think anyone would be, so I could see America and Britain being angry. To look for Bin Laden seemed reasonable to go against terrorism, but the war has become very difficult." "It's a drag, isn't it?" - On John Lennon's murder "I thought she was a cold woman. I think that's wrong. She's just the opposite. I think she's just more determined than most people to be herself." - On his updated feelings about Yoko Ono, 1995 "Seeing that so many inaccurate stories have been written at the moment about Heather and myself, all I can ask people to do is not believe them and understand that most of what is coming out is made up and entirely false. Thanks for your support." [About dealing with the memory of Linda today] "She's all around me, you know. And everybody I know knows her and remembers her. And so I talk a lot about her." "I am the proudest dad in the world. I thought that it was brilliant, and Stella has come such a long way since she first started out." [Following daughter Stella McCartney's graduation fashion show, June 1995] No one is musically educated until they have heard the Beach Boys Pet Sounds.