Quotes by Paul McCartney

• None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.
• Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.
• George Martin, he's very good at a very sort of lush, sweet arrangement.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 don't ever try to make a serious social comment.
• I don't take me seriously. If we get some giggles, I don't mind.
• I don't work at being ordinary.
• 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 had this song called Helter Skelter, which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise.
• Lyricists play with words.
• 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.
• 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 saw that Meryl Streep said, I just want to do my job well. And really, that's all I'm ever trying to do.
• 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.
• 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 got to admit it's getting better. It's a little better all the time.
• If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
• In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
• It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard "Heartbreak Hotel" I thought, this is it.
• 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.
• Love is all you need.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Think globally, act locally.
• There are only four people who knew what the Beatles were about anyway.
• 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.
• 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.'
• 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!