John Lydon Quotes - Page 8

A record company used to be a very good thing, but they ended up soul-destroyingly trapping people in the accounting department. And you couldn't get any further, and the heads of each department were changing all the time, so you couldn't have any permanent relationship within the corporation.

I'm not able to tell you what the best song is yet, because there's more to come. I feel that in me. I can still feel the burning energy and the desire to create and create and create.

All the things that you would have thought would have made me a professional A1 criminal... wrong. I decided that was too lazy and easy, and because of the way British society is, quite frankly you were denied an education, so I got one of my own.

Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!

For me, the best rock is not what you play - it's what you're not playing.

My entire life, socially, was all around the Maggie era. That was the great challenge as a Sex Pistol was how to deal with Margaret Thatcher. I think we did rather good.

Records were vitally important to the development of music and of all music cultures. With that being pushed by the wayside, I can't see an iPod uniting us. In fact it separates us, the streets are full of people bumping into lamp posts, listening to their own little universe, and there's no sharing in that.

The so-called alleged 'art' of the video - well, the video has killed the radio star, but the video star killed the live musician, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Words cannot express quite a lot of feelings, whereas a noise or tone or drone or sound, an accordion falling down a staircase, can somehow capture an emotion much better.

I don't listen to music. I hate music.

It's nice to be a part of history but people should get it right. I may not be perfect, but I'm bloody close.

Love is two minutes and fifty-two seconds of squishy sounds.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

Dummy Dum Dum was my nickname for years at school. I was the strange one of the family, the one who couldn't remember his name.

Books are like my one and only joy.

Love is what you feel for a dog or a pussycat. It doesn't apply to humans.

I think there's something basically wrong with the general public that they do need their icons.

I don't release records to be anything but enjoyable.

I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel.

The greatest achievement of my life is enduring a disease that nearly killed me. I came out of it a better person. It's my one great accomplishment - more so than anything else I've done.

A healthy mind can live in an unhealthy body.

My words are my bullets.

I'd rather give up my ears than my eyes, which might sound unusual for a musician.

I keep falling off the edge of the stage because I can't see it. I can't see my wrinkles in the mirror either, though.

I like America's diversity and its landscapes.