Paul McCartney Quotes

(Recalling raising his children in the 1970s)There was one moment where they were riding their little ponies in Scotland, and Stella (Stella McCartney) said to me: `Dad! You`re Paul McCartney, aren`t you?` `Yes darling, but I`m Daddy really`.

(on making movies) "It`s not a bad way to get through an afternoon".

"No one is musically educated until they have heard The Beach Boys` `Pet Sounds`".

(About dealing with the memory of Linda McCartney 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."

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 (Osama Bin Laden) seemed reasonable to go against terrorism, but the war has become very difficult.

When we were kids, George (George Harrison) 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,

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

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.

"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 a sign in the audience)

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.

We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realised we were eating the leg of an animal who had until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each other and said: "Wait a minute, we love these sheep-they`re such gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?" It was the last time we ever did.

The medical argument for animal testing doesn`t stand up. Even if it did, I don`t think we should kill other species. We think we`re so much better; I`m not sure we are. I tell people, We`ve beaten into submission every animal on the face of the Earth, so we are the clear winners of whatever battle is going on between the species. Couldn`t we be generous? I really do think it`s time to get nice. No need to keep beating up on them. I think we`ve got to show that we`re kind.

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.

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

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.

Everybody at EMI had become part of the furniture. I`d be a couch; Coldplay are an armchair. Robbie Williams, I dread to think what he was. (On leaving EMI, his record label of 45 years)

(regarding his ten-day jail term after his arrest for cannabis possession at Tokyo`s Narita Airport, Jan. 6, 1980) "It was pretty rough. Just a thin mattress 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 organize sing-alongs with other prisoners."

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.

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.

Think globally, act locally.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds actually wasn`t meant to say LSD. It was a drawing that John`s son brought home from school. Lucy was a kid in his school.

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

Somebody said to me, (The Beatles) were anti-materialistic.` That`s a huge myth. (John Lennon) and I literally used to sit down and say, `Now, let`s write a swimming pool.`

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.

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.

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 don`t work at being ordinary.

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.

Lyricists play with words.

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

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.

I`ve seen those famous Nixon (Richard Nixon) transcripts where Elvis (Elvis Presley) 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.

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

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.

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)

It`s a drag, isn`t it? (on John Lennon`s murder)

Seeing that so many inaccurate stories have been written at the moment about (Heather Mills) 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.

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

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

I can`t deal with the press; I hate all those Beatles questions.

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

I`m not religious, but I`m very spiritual.

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.

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)

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.

I figure I`ve probably got a better chance of coming up with a good Paul McCartney song than Oasis has.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

(on his LSD experience) "It`s like taking an aspirin without having a headache."

I don`t ever try to make a serious social comment.

Love is all you need.

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

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.

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

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

The two of us were on fire every time we sat down to write.

Will you still need me,will you still feed me..When I`m sixty-four?