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.

You can't even imagine how it felt to have a cassette that you could take with you with a microphone so you could put down an idea and not have to hum it a million times to remember what it was.

I hate wasting time.

I can find my way from 500 A.D. through to 1066 pretty well as an amateur historian.

There's nothing worse than a bunch of jaded old farts, and that's a fact.

I know that bands that haven't put out a record for 10 years are playing to 20,000 people a night. But that's not the achievement.

Theatres are built because they were the boards for entertainment.

I wanted my voice to be a tenor sax, really.

I've still got a twinkle in me.

So for a long time I closed my eyes to the possibility of America having a white voice.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you.

I think I'm prone to panic.

It's a two-dimensional gig being a singer, and you can get lost in your own tedium and repetition.

It's crucial that I kind of keep up, without drifting into the backslapping land of cliche and lifetime achievement awards.

Entertainment isn't just based on the very structured syndrome of European popular music, and it's great that there are so many thousands of people who are of the same opinion.

I have to try and change the landscape, whatever it is.

I've been scared and I've liked not hanging on to stuff where I know that I'm in my comfort zone.

It's not some great work of beauty and love to be a rock-and-roll singer.

I'm so aware of the fact that if I hadn't taken the chances that I've taken along the line, I probably wouldn't be getting the best out of my voice anymore, I might have messed it up in that awful, predictable place.