Mick Jagger Quotes

I didn't have any inhibitions. I saw Elvis and Gene Vincent, and I thought, "Well, I can do this." And I liked doing it.

It's a real buzz, even in front of 20 people, to make a complete fool of yourself. But people seemed to like it. And the thing is, if people started throwing tomatoes at me, I wouldn't have gone on with it.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

I always think it's better to be not taking drugs or drinking or anything. That's not saying I've never done it because I have. But I sort of learned I think after a while there has been - it didn't take me that long to realize that it wasn't a good thing.

Starting off in music, the purpose of it was not to become like well known on the street and be famous. You know, I didn't even think about that part of being famous. Famous for making records, yes, but famous face in a woman's magazine, I never thought of that. I didn't want that.

Casanova, he had no money and no power, and according to some, he even was cute. But he had talent to live, and some literature talent. I love how he invented himself.

A good thing never ends.

One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live.

People have this obsession. They want you to be like you were in 1969. They want you to, because otherwise their youth goes with you. It's very selfish, but it's understandable.

I don't believe in original melodies. There are only so many computations of eight notes.

The music's rehearsed a lot. All people think about is, they think, in rock 'n' roll, they get the music off right and they think it's okay standing, looking macho. Well, it's not. That's boring. If you want to be a performer you've got to do a lot more work than that.

That's one of the good things about a lot of the young British bands, they are mixing all styles of music. I think that's very good because that's very now.

I don't like drugs. I think cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming bore. It's about the most boring drug ever invented.

Only a madman or an actor would want to be President of the United States.

I, personally, have a lot of energy, so I don't see it as an immediate problem.

I don't spend money on anything. I don't collect anything. I don't spend it on furniture.

Americans shocked me by their behavior and their narrow-mindedness.

Have I turned into a motorized preacher? We spend so much time in cars that if you don't try to get some experiences out of it, you can go crazy.

I didn't really like being at college. It wasn't like it was Oxford and had been the most wonderful time of my life. It was really a dull, boring course I was stuck on.

A lot of times songs are very much of a moment, that you just encapsulate. They come to you, you write them, you feel good that day, or bad that day.

Most people in England don't live in the North, and people are snobby in England, so they wanted a band from the South.

My mother has always been unhappy with what I do. She would rather I do something nicer, like be a bricklayer.

Taking drugs on a recreation level is one thing. But taking them while you're working on a stage is, I don't think it was that great. It's the control factor. And the thing about being on stage, you really want to feel that you're sort of in control a lot. It's not a place where you want to be out of control.

Right now I can't be sure that I will be back on stage. We have been touring for two years and that is way too much.

I don't want to be singing Satisfaction when I'm 40.

Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind.

The new fashion is to talk about the most private parts of your life; other fashion is to repent of your excesses and to criticize the drugs that made you happy in the other times.

I don't think people care about the mechanics of songwriting.

You have to realize that everyone in a band is all more or less together, and everyone has their own niche, and some people lead in some ways, and some people lead in others.

I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my creative processes. It was a very good period, 1968 - there was a good feeling in the air. It was a very creative period for everyone.

I prefer to live in a rented house. No ties. Nothing around my neck. Just the minimum kind of bare comforts of home.

Normally I am not so violent. Everything comes from the question: Where will I die? It is a strong concern.

You don't have to bathe every day to look clean. It's just an illusion.

I'm not the businessman. I don't deal with the business at all. Not anymore. Occasionally, every four years or five years, they tell me I've run out of money, I have to go and make some more.

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.

It's Only Rock and Roll.

I think people are afraid to express their opinions half the time.

Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.

I think that people taking drugs occasionally are great. I think there's nothing wrong with it. But if you do it the whole time, you don't produce as good things as you could.

Thousands of years people have taken drugs, whether it's alcohol, which was invented about 5,000 years ago. People have been using that. And all kinds of marijuana and all these things, tobacco. So all these drugs have been - it seems to be the propensity of human beings to want to use them.

Movies in this country, its very complicated, and we could bang on about it forever, but the French movie industry is very different because its very obviously French.

I don't only like rock music. There are other forms of music that I find interesting. I would want to do everything, every kind of music. I wouldn't want to be limited to like playing heavy metal or whatever.

I liked John a lot. He was the one I really got on with the most. We weren't buddy-buddies but we were always friendly. But after the Beatles and the Stones stopped playing clubs, we didn't see each other that much until he separated from Yoko, around 1974. We got really friendly again. And when he went back with Yoko, he went into hibernation ... when I went to visit someone in the Dakota, I'd leave him a note saying: 'I live next door: I know you don't want to see anyone, but if you do, please call.' He never did.

If you're really on some heavily addictive drug, you think about the drug, and everything else is secondary. You try and make everything work, but the drug comes first.

The Spice Girl Victoria Beckham has just published the story of her life. I confess that it is not in my reading table.

People think they know you. They know the things about you that you have forgotten.

I've managed to avoid tattoos so far.

I don't find it easy dealing with people with drug problems. It helps if you're all taking drugs, all the same drugs.