I really had to think and learn about musical intervals.

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

You have to ask these questions: who pays the piper, and what is valuable in this life?

I hate cliche.

I still like to get carried away - but passively.

My dad played fiddle as well.

I think I surprise myself.

I'm just lucky because my kids are grown-up - I love them, very proud of them, and we are in close contact as big-time friends, but they don't need me that much now and I can actually enjoy this wonderful world of music.

Alone I'm nothing.

There's a similarity between European and North African folk musics.

Lately, I'm spending more and more time working with non-rock musicians and leaving the mainstream - almost dissolving into another world, musically.

When you're 20 years old and you're making points with volume and dynamism, it's a fantastic thing to do.

So many white kids, English kids - we had no culture.

I'm British - ostensibly British - but I don't know where I really belong, you know?

A daily blog would just about finish me off completely.

Soon, I'm going to need help crossing the street.

Now I'm a blithering oaf hanging on to the coatsleeves of commerciality.

There have been people I've warmed to over the years but, as the situation I'm in is so fleeting and transient, I've always known it's going to be over kind of real quick.

I've got the big name, but I've always wanted to be in a band, one of a band.

No, I've never thought that I was gay. And that's not something you think. It's something you know.

The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone.

Music is for every single person that walks the planet.

I think that passion and love and pain are all bearable, and they go to make love beautiful.

I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to feel lonely. I like to need things.

There's no point stepping up to the golden platform if you're going to repeat yourself.

You can't give up something you really believe in for financial reasons. If you die by the roadside - so be it. But at least you know you've tried. Ten minutes in the music scene was the equal of one hundred years outside of it.

Does anyone remember laughter?

The trouble is now, with rock'n'roll and stuff, it gets so big that it loses what once upon a time was a magnificent thing, where it was special and quite elusive and occasionally a little sinister and it had its own world nobody could get in.

I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn't want to go on!

I don't know how much more expressive you can get than being a rock and roll singer.

People say that I'm a millionaire, but that's not true - I only spend millions.

Whenever I have bid a hasty goodbye to a loved one, I've always made sure that my record collection was safely stored away in the boot of the car.

I'm a grandfather now.

I think Led Zeppelin must have worn some of the most peculiar clothing that men had ever been seen to wear without cracking a smile.

You know, people can't fall in love with me just because I'm good at what I do.

I think I could sing and shear a few sheep at the same time.

I've stopped apologizing to myself for having this great period of success and financial acceptance.

People have got to let their bodies breathe a little bit more. That's the great thing about being a pompous, jumped-up rock god. There's plenty of air around you.

I daresay one good concert justifies a week of satisfaction at home.

Old men do it better. We're not so sensitive in certain areas.

My vocal style I haven't tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today.

If I didn't do what I do, I wouldn't be as young as I am.

There's nothing new under the sun - you just get a can of paint out.

I can't moan about any of it. I had a great time in the goldfish bowl.

The kind of vocal exaggeration that I developed was based on what key songs were in.

Led Zeppelin has been there through three generations of teenage angst. And there's a generation of kids now who won't know it, post-Linkin Park.

The events between 1968 and 1980 were the kind of cornerstone for everything I've been able to do, they gave me the springboard.

We are trying to communicate a fulfilled ideal. Does anybody remember laughter?

I'm not a flowerchild or anything like that... whatever it was.

I owe everything to the musicians I work with.