Paul McCartney Quotes

Paul McCartney delivers heartfelt, lyrical musings on love, music and family.

51 quotes

1. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away Now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday.

2. Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.

3. Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away. Oh, I believe in yesterday.

4. She's lovely, great. She was very friendly. She was just like a mum to us.

5. To lead a better life, I need my love to be here. Here, making each day of the year, Changing my life with a wave of her hand. Nobody can deny that there's something there.

6. I want her everywhere and if she's beside me I know I need never care. But to love her is to need her Everywhere, knowing that love is to share each one believing that love never dies watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there.

7. Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, nothing could come between us. When it gets dark I'll tow your heart away

8. Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?

9. Hey Jude, don't make it bad Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart Then you can start to make it better.

10. In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

11. 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.

12. I thought the only lonely place was on the moon.

13. I wasn't really dead.

14. We thought we'd be really big in Liverpool.

15. With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion.

16. 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

17. I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.

18. I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity - to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.

19. I now realize that taking drugs was like taking an aspirin without having a headache.

20. 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.

21. I have no problem with bootlegs, although every time I say that, my lawyer says, 'Oh yes you do.'

22. It [LSD] opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think of what we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world if the politicians would take LSD. There wouldn't be any more war or poverty or famine.

23. It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard 'Heartbreak Hotel' I thought, this is it.

24. She's absolutely gorgeous. Heather and I are having a wonderful time. I could go on for hours and drag the photographs out, but I'd never get back to the studio.

25. 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'.

26. We did it this way because both John and I had a number of songs which were great as they were but which we'd never finished.

27. 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.

28. We probably seem to be anti-religious...none of us believes in God.

29. Many years ago I was fishing, and as I was reeling in the poor fish, I realised, 'I am killing him - all for the passing pleasure it brings me'. Something inside me clicked. I realised as I watched him fight for breath that his life was as important to him as mine is to me.

30. 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!

31. He's (Ringo Starr) not even the best drummer in the Beatles…

32. I never really got on that well with Yoko anyway. Strangely enough, I only started to get to know her after John's death.

33. I think a domestic situation can change you and your attitudes. I suppose if you did get a bit content, then you might not write savage lyrics.

34. Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.

35. I am quite happy that the Beatles came and went. There is even a sort of glory in not having it go on forever. There is a complete body of work that went from A to Z and it is all pretty damn good stuff. The one thing I am particularly proud of is that nearly every single bit of it has some good message. I feel fortunate when I look back. Life is not easy, but I've been very lucky - and I'm touching wood as I say that.

36. Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.

37. My dad, bless him, was a musician. And his dad had thought that his music was rubbish.

38. I can't manage without homeopathy. In fact, I never go anywhere without homeopathic remedies.

39. Live a little be a gypsy, get around. Get your feet up off the ground, live a little, get around.

40. 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.

41. The good Lord made this world and everything that's in it. The way I see it, baby, you got to love it to the limit.

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. No one is out to break your heart, it only seems that way.

45. The willow turns his back on inclement weather. And if he can do it, we can do it.

46. One of my great memories of John is from when we were having some argument. I was disagreeing and we were calling each other names. We let it settle for a second and then he lowered his glasses and he said: "It's only me." And then he put his glasses back on again. To me, that was John. Those were the moments when I actually saw him without the facade, the armor, which I loved as well, like anyone else. It was a beautiful suit of armor. But it was wonderful when he let the visor down and you'd just see the John Lennon that he was frightened to reveal to the world.

47. This was one of the best things about Lennon and McCartney, the competitive element within the team. It was great. But hard to live with.

48. If this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give in and cry, say live and let die.

49. 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.

50. 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.

51. I'm only 49 years old. I'm still in the middle of this whole thing. I don't feel like it's finished at all. I'm still planning to write better songs.