The Beatles

"Baby's good to me, you know, She's happy as can be, you know, She said so. I'm in love with her and I feel fine.I'm so glad that she's my little girl. She's so glad she's telling all the world."

"That boy took my love away, He'll regret it someday, But this boy wants you back again. That boy isn't good for you, Tho' he may want you too, This boy wants you back again."

"Oh yeah, I´ll tell you something I think you´ll understand When I say that something I wanna hold your hand."

"You think you lost your love When I saw her yesterday. It's you she's thinking of And she told me what to say. She says she loves you And you know that can't be bad. Yes, she loves you And you know you should be glad. Ooh!"

"The only way I'll get you is to get you in bed."

"That they were the worst musicians in the world. They were no-playing motherfuckers. Paul was the worst bass player I ever heard. And Ringo? Don’t even talk about it. I remember once we were in the studio with George Martin, and Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said, “Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.” So he did, and we called Ronnie Verrell, a jazz drummer. Ronnie came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says, “George, can you play it back for me one more time?” So George did, and Ringo says, “That didn’t sound so bad.” And I said, “Yeah, motherfucker because it ain’t you.” Great guy, though."

"He's always underrated. … He's probably … the finest rock drummer in the world today. … Ringo is the one."

"I don't collect any memorabilia. I wish I'd have kept everything I had. But who knew you had to keep it. Just gave it away. And we lost so much and we didn't look after a lot of it. I believe Paul's got everything he ever had, but I lost a lot of mine."

"I am a big Beatles fan. And, you know, unbeknownst to anyone, I used to be one. But I have no problems of putting titles and lines from other songs in my songs, because they're great lines and great titles. And some of them I even thought of. You know, I think this is the third time I've used "It Don't Come Easy." I used that on "Time Takes Time," I think, as well. So it's just a great line that, you know, expresses so much. So I just put it in again."

"The song ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ was written specifically for me, but they had one line that I wouldn’t sing. It was ‘What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?’ I said, ‘There’s not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,’ because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage; and I thought that that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes."

"I used to wish that I could write songs, like the others—and I've tried, but I just can't. I can get the words all right, but whenever I think of a tune the others always say it sounds like such-a-thing, and when they point it out, I see what they mean."

"First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things.... But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them.... My soul is that of a drummer.... It came to where I had to make a decision — I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life."

"The world's saddest man will live here in Los Angeles."

"Drumming is my middle name."

"When we first started, they basically went John and Paul's way because they were the writers and they would say, "This is the song," and I would play as creatively as I could. Sometimes I would have three people telling me how to do it. They were saying play it this like on that track. I'm saying, "For Christ's sake, there are two drummers there." They could never hear that, you know. You'd have to have four arms to do half the stuff they wanted me to do."

"All I do is scream your name."

"Got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues And you know it don't come easy."

"I'd Like to be Under the sea In an octopus's garden with you."

"I got blisters on my fingers!"

"Without going out of your door, You can know all things on earth. Without looking out of your window you could know the ways of heaven. The farther one travels. the less one knows, the less one really knows."

"If you'd have asked me that question, 9 months ago, well, I would have been able to say, to come to America, to have a number one hit in America, and to play Carnegie Hall, to play the Palladium, to play in front of the Queen, and all that. ... The things we've done, they were our ambitions, say 9 months ago."

"If there's a God, I want to see Him. It's pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception. In that way you can see, hear and play with God. Perhaps this may sound weird, but God is really there next to you."

"From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality."

"My idea in "My Sweet Lord," because it sounded like a "pop song," was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by "Hallelujah," and by the time it gets to "Hare Krishna," they're already hooked, and their foot's tapping, and they're already singing along "Hallelujah," to kind of lull them into a sense of false security. And then suddenly it turns into "Hare Krishna," and they will all be singing that before they know what's happened, and they will think, "Hey, I thought I wasn't supposed to like Hare Krishna!""

"I always felt at home with Krishna. You see it was already a part of me. I think it's something that's been with me from my previous birth .... I'd rather be one of the devotees of God than one of the straight, so-called sane or normal people who just don't understand that man is a spiritual being, that he has a soul."

"It just annoyed me that people got so into the Beatles. "Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." It's not that I don't like talking about them. I've never stopped talking about them. It's "Beatles this, Beatles that, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." Then in the end, it's like "Oh, sod off with the Beatles," you know?"

"I had no ambition when I was a kid other than to play guitar and get in a rock 'n' roll band. I don't really like to be the guy in the white suit at the front. Like in the Beatles, I was the one who kept quiet at the back and let the other egos be at the front."

"He was annoyed 'cause I didn't say that he'd written one line of this song "Taxman." But I also didn't say how I wrote two lines of "Come Together" or three lines of "Eleanor Rigby," you know? I wasn't getting into any of that. I think, in the balance, I would have had more things to be niggled with him about than he would have had with me!"

"Rap music is just computerised crap. I listen to Top of the Pops and after three songs I feel like killing someone."

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

"If everybody who had a gun just shot themselves there wouldn’t be a problem."

"You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it."

"That's what the whole Sixties Flower-Power thing was about: "Go away, you bunch of boring people.""

"I'd thought it would be something like King's Road [London], only more. Somehow I expected them all to own their own little shops. I expected them to all be nice and clean and friendly and happy … (on the contrary, I discovered them to be) hideous, spotty little teenagers."

"I don't mind anybody dropping out of anything, but it's the imposition on somebody else I don't like. The moment you start dropping out and then begging off somebody else to help you, then it's no good. It doesn't matter what you are as long as you work. It doesn't matter if you chop wood as long as you chop and keep chopping. Then you get what's coming to you. You don't have to drop out. In fact, if you drop out you put yourself further away from the goal of life than if you were to keep working."

"I got tired of people saying "But what can I do?" Also, the reluctance of the press to report the full details created the need to bring attention to it. So the song "Bangla Desh" was written specifically to get attention to the war prior to the concert."

"Even now I still meet waiters in Bengali restaurants who say, "When we were in the jungle fighting, it was great to know somebody out there was thinking of us.""

"The money we raised was secondary. The main thing was, we spread the word and helped get the war ended ... What we did show was that musicians and people are more humane than politicians."

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

"If you're listening to this song You may think the chords are going wrong But they're not We just wrote it like that"

"...the more I learn the less I know..."

"Do what you want to do, And go where you're going to. Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you."

"I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping While my guitar gently weeps."

"I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love I don't know how someone controlled you They bought and sold you."

"I look at the world and I notice it’s turning. While my guitar gently weeps. With every mistake we must surely be learning, Still my guitar gently weeps."

"I don't know how you were diverted You were perverted too. I don't know how you were inverted No one alerted you."

"Little darling, It's been a long cold lonely winter. Little darling, It feels like years since it's been here. Here comes the sun..."

"Little darling I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling It seems like years since it's been clear Here comes the sun..."

"Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover."

"If I grow up I'll be a singer, wearing rings on every finger Not worrying what they or you say, I'll live and love and maybe someday Who knows baby you may comfort me."