"You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works."

"You've got to separate the singer and the songs."

"I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever."

"Hearing the blues changed my life."

"When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now."

"You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense."

"Singing is my profession - there is no plan B."

"I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out."

"If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it."

"There's always got to be a struggle. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else. If there is, tell me about it."

"Music is spiritual. The music business is not."

"These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over."

"The future is keeping you out of the present time."

"I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity."

"A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception."

"I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first."

"In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing."

"I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!"

"There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles."

"I think when you get past your second album, it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time."

"If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there"

"It's all in the mind."

"With every mistake, we must surely be learning."

"The Beatles saved the world from boredom."

"Life goes on within you and without you"

"If everyone who had a gun just shot themselves, there wouldn't be a problem."

"As long as you hate, there will be people to hate."

"When you've seen beyond yourself, then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there."

"It's all too much."

"Show me that I m everywhere and get me home for tea."

"My son looks more like George Harrison than I do."

"With our love, we could save the world."

"All things must pass."

"Give me love Give me love Give me peace on earth Give me light Give me life Keep me free from birth Give me hope Help me cope, with this heavy load Trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul"

"Give me love Give me love Give me peace on earth Give me light Give me life Keep me free from birth Give me hope Help me cope, with this heavy load Trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul"

"Avant Garde is French for bullshit."

"Try to realize it's all within yourself no one else can make you change, and to see you're only very small and life flows on within you and without you."

"What would you call this haircut?" arthur."

"If you drive a car, I'll tax the street; if you try to sit, I'll tax your seat; if you get too cold, I'll tax the heat; if you take a walk, I'll tax your feet."

"Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed because we didn't have any. It is like monkeys in a zoo. They die. You know, everything needs to be left alone."

"Sometimes I feel like I’m actually on the wrong planet. It’s great when I’m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think, ‘What the hell am I doing here?"

"The saddest thing was actually getting fed up with one another. It's like growing up in a family. When you get to a certain age, you want to go off and get your own girl and your own car, split up a bit."

"Hare Krishna, Peace and Love"

"Without looking out of my window I could know the ways of heaven"

"It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is, as it's only a Northern Song."

"I fell in love, not with anything or anybody in particular but with everything."

"The only thing we really have to work at in this life is how to manifest love."

"What is life?"

"As far as I'm concerned, there won't be a Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead."

"Love one another."