Top 100 Paul McCartney Quotes
#1. Somewhere down the line everyone must pay for their misdeeds.
Paul McCartney
#2. If anyone had told me in the '60s that 20 years later we'd still be talking about whether pot was worse than this or that, I'd have said, Oh, come off it, boys.
Paul McCartney
#3. My mum died when I was 14. That is a kind of strange age to lose a mother. John lost his mum when he was 17.
Paul McCartney
#4. If you're using your imagination, you tend to look into the past for ideas.
Paul McCartney
#5. If this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give in and cry, say live and let die.
Paul McCartney
#6. Life is an energy field, a bunch of molecules. And these particular molecules formed to make these four guys, who then formed into this band called the Beatles and did all that work. I have to think that was something metaphysical. Something alchemic. Something that must be thought of as magic.
Paul McCartney
#7. Animation is not just for children - it's also for adults who take drugs.
Paul McCartney
#8. I guess the ultimate luxury professionally is to be able to change your direction, to work in another medium.
Paul McCartney
#9. George Martin, he's very good at a very sort of lush, sweet arrangement.
Paul McCartney
#10. Personal differences, musical differences, business differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family.
Paul McCartney
#11. We would normally play it to Cynthia or whoever was around
Paul McCartney
#12. I'm actually doing what I want with my life. I do sometime think I could just shut up and rest on my laurels and say: you know what guys, I'll operate out of the pocket you put me in ... but no way! No way I'm gonna do that! I'd just get bored stiff the first minute.
Paul McCartney
#13. When you get the money, you still need to keep going; you don't stop. There has to be something else. I think it's the freedom to do what you want and to live your dreams.
Paul McCartney
#14. Bend like the willow, winds gonna blow you hard and cold tonight. Life as it happens, nobody warns you, willow hold on tight.
Paul McCartney
#15. If you love your life, everybody will love you too.
Paul McCartney
#16. Home in her apartment she'd dwell 'til the man from her dreams comes to break the spell.
Paul McCartney
#17. In Liverpool we'd only done one-hour sessions. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours. We played very loud, bang, bang, all the time. The Germans loved it.
Paul McCartney
#18. Painting is a magical process that I like, where you conjure something out of nothing; you get a little idea that leads you through ... You can go into a trance while you're doing it, so it's a nice contrast to real life.
Paul McCartney
#19. I just start singing some words with a tune. I don't ever write a song thinking, Now I'll write a song about ...
Paul McCartney
#20. We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us. We've been through a lot and we've reached a stage where we really value life.
Paul McCartney
#21. I hate the idea of success robbing you of your private life.
Paul McCartney
#22. I don't know anything about the Appalachian mountains or cowboys and Indians or anything. I just made it up.
Paul McCartney
#23. My record producer [David Kahne] said the major record labels these days are like dinosaurs sitting around discussing the asteroid. They know it's going to hit. They don't know when, they don't know where it's coming from. But it's sort of hit already. With iTunes, and all of that.
Paul McCartney
#24. To get a big hit single you've got to go a bit dance. You've got to go a bit Britney. I don't think I can do that - well, I could but it wouldn't look very seemly!.
Paul McCartney
#25. When we were kids growing up in Liverpool, all we ever wanted to be was Elvis Presley.
Paul McCartney
#26. I think [Transcendental Meditation] is what people need. They don't need high minded talk, they need results.
Paul McCartney
#27. I think the idea of getting out of a traffic jam and getting out of work each week and going and doing all this stuff would be really exhausting.
Paul McCartney
#31. When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.
Paul McCartney
#32. Help them to learn songs of joy, instead of burn, baby, burn.
Paul McCartney
#33. I have such an admiration for John [Lennon], like most people.
But to be the guy who wrote with him, well that's enough. Right
there you could retire and go, 'Jesus I had a fantastic life. Take me, Lord.'
Paul McCartney
#34. We can work it out. Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.
Paul McCartney
#35. Most people don't know that I invented the selfie.
Paul McCartney
#36. The long and winding road that leads to your door / Will never disappear, / I've seen that road before it always leads me here, / Leads me to your door.
Paul McCartney
#37. I'm singing 'English Tea' from my new album 'Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.' I have a cup of tea in the morning, so it's something good to wake up to.
Paul McCartney
#38. When you got a job to do, you got to do it well. You gotta give the other fellow hell.
Paul McCartney
#39. Look, people are allowed their own opinions and they don't always coincide with yours. As an artist you just have to keep plugging on.
Paul McCartney
#40. It was a period when they used to read into our lyrics a lot, used to think there was more in them than there was.
Paul McCartney
#41. All at once we see things in our skies, and we both realize it together. Well you know they were wrong, get on the right thing.
Paul McCartney
#42. Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.
Paul McCartney
#43. If there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.
Paul McCartney
#44. That's not really important what religion people are attached to, because by the same argument I have a lot of Christian friends and Moslem friends. It's just happened that I do have a lot of relatives and friends who are Jewish.
Paul McCartney
#45. Hamburg totally wrecked us. I remember getting home to England and my dad thought I was half-dead. I looked like a skeleton, I hadn't noticed the change, I'd been having such a ball!
Paul McCartney
#46. Criticism didn't really stop us and it shouldn't ever stop anyone, because critics are only the people who can't get a record deal themselves.
Paul McCartney
#47. The willow turns his back on inclement weather. And if he can do it, we can do it.
Paul McCartney
#48. What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.
Paul McCartney
#49. My dad was a particularly polite kind of guy, very courteous.
Paul McCartney
#50. Every time I felt low, I just put on an Elvis record and I'd feel great, beautiful.
Paul McCartney
#51. Sadness isn't sadness. It's happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They're balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It's life that's jumped off a tall cliff.
Paul McCartney
#52. Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it.
Paul McCartney
#54. By the time we made "Abbey Road", John and I were openly critical of each other's music, and I felt John wasn't much interested in performing anything he hadn't written himself.
Paul McCartney
#55. There was one moment where they were riding their little ponies in Scotland, and Stella said to me: 'Dad! You're Paul McCartney, aren't you?' 'Yes darling, but I'm Daddy really'.
Paul McCartney
#56. It's nice to have a little bit of art to fall back on.
Paul McCartney
#57. People would say to me, "Hey man, you look just like Paul McCartney", and I'd say: "I wish I had his money!"
Paul McCartney
#58. All we ever got in those [early] days was Where are you from? Liverpool? You'll have to be in London before you can do it. Nobody's ever done it from Liverpool.
Paul McCartney
#59. I'm trying to do it honestly and genuinely; if some of it's not working to your taste, what can I say?
Paul McCartney
#61. 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.
Paul McCartney
#62. At the office where the paper grows, she takes a break, drinks another coffee, and she finds it hard to stay awake. It's just another day.
Paul McCartney
#63. Late at night when the wind is still I'll come flying through your door, And you'll know what love is for. I am a bluebird, I'm a bluebird ...
Paul McCartney
#64. And Jet, I thought the Major was a lady suffragette.
Paul McCartney
#65. 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.
Paul McCartney
#66. It comes in handy in situations like that. People always expect you to be riding around in stretch limousines all the time, but I will sometimes take public transportation if it's convenient, and it does surprise people, you see the heads turn.
Paul McCartney
#67. In some ways we live in a world where things appear to be very logical, very rational, and mechanical aspects of our world are rather scientific and rather straightforward.
Paul McCartney
#68. I realize now that taking drugs was like taking an aspirin without having a headache.
Paul McCartney
#69. 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.
Paul McCartney
#70. When you said you were a terrible singer, I thought you were being humble. But you weren't.
Paul McCartney
#71. My stepmother sold my birth certificate and someone asked why I didn't buy it back. I don't know, really. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It was mine. It cost me nothing and suddenly I had to buy it back.
Paul McCartney
#72. 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.
Paul McCartney
#73. My message is a peaceful one and I hope that the idea will spread.
Paul McCartney
#74. Going to do it to you sweet banana, like it's never been done, and we'll get high, high, high, in the mid-day sun.
Paul McCartney
#75. It's like a lot of kids; when you tell them someone's died, they laugh.
Paul McCartney
#76. The thing you must remember is that I'm the Number One John Lennon fan. I love him to this day and I always did love him
Paul McCartney
#77. And I loved Fats Waller. I love his instrumental abilities, his vocal abilities and his sense of humor.
Paul McCartney
#78. I have always adored Mahler, and Mahler was a major influence on the music of the Beatles. John and me used to sit and do the Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhorn for hours, we'd take turns singing and playing the piano. We thought Mahler was gear.
Paul McCartney
#79. Long live all us crazy soldiers
Who were born under calico skies
May we never be called to handle
All the weapons of war we despise
Paul McCartney
#80. Linda's at her best when she's doing you a meal at home. That's when you see Linda. She cooks, she looks after the kids.
Paul McCartney
#81. When you're wide awake say it for goodness sake, it's gonna be a great day.
Paul McCartney
#82. Love Me Do, the first song we recorded, John was supposed to sing the lead, but they changed their minds and asked me to sing lead because they wanted John to play harmonica.
Paul McCartney
#83. Why would I retire? Sit at home and watch TV? No thanks. I'd rather be out playing.
Paul McCartney
#84. I'm often reading a magazine and hearing about someone's new record, and I think, 'Oh, boy, that's gonna be better than me.' It's a very common thing.
Paul McCartney
#85. I think it's something to do with the structural quality of the songs. We weren't actually trying to make stuff that was cool, or of the moment, although a lot of it was. We were trying to make stuff that was good enough to stick around and lo and behold, it has.
Paul McCartney
#86. I lost my voice. I'd never had to cancel a show before and I had to walk around with a pad and a pen, writing things down.
Paul McCartney
#87. But you know, as a kid I would have thought of a vegetarian as a wimp.
Paul McCartney
#88. There's nothing bigger than being asked to perform at the Super Bowl.
Paul McCartney
#89. I was still 15 when I met John Lennon at a village fete in Woolton, in Liverpool.
Paul McCartney
#90. 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.
Paul McCartney
#91. It's a powerful thing hearing your friend on a very beautiful song.
Paul McCartney
#92. Everybody's talking about the President, we all chipped in for a bag of cement.
Paul McCartney
#93. She is the rock 'n' roll queen. Weirdly enough, that is one of the things her reign will be remembered for. Queen Elizabeth I, we remember Raleigh; Queen Elizabeth II it's gonna be the Beatles.
Paul McCartney
#94. The best thing I ever saw was a man who loved his wife.
Paul McCartney
#95. I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course.
Paul McCartney
#96. You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.
Paul McCartney
#97. None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.
Paul McCartney
#98. You see, my mother was a district nurse until she died when I was 14, and we used to move from time to time because of her work.
Paul McCartney
#99. I've got to admit it's getting better. It's a little better all the time.
Paul McCartney
#100. I don't have any desire to learn. I feel it's like a voodoo, that it would spoil things if I actually learnt how things are done.
Paul McCartney
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