“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.”

“Keith Richards is a man without regret. When I ask him if—given the chance to do it all over again—he’d start taking heroin, he doesn’t pause. “Oh yes. Yes. There was a lot of experience in there—you meet a lot of weird people, different takes on life that you’re not going to find if you don’t go there. I loved a good high. And if you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses, because they’re asleep. There’s songs zooming around everywhere. There’s songs zooming through here right now, in the air.”

“If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.”

“Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.”

“To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing.”

“I don't trust doctors. It's not to say there ain't some good ones, but on a general level, no, I wouldn't trust 'em at all.”

“To me, my biggest fear is getting a big head, and that is when I get the hammer. Because it's very easy in this game to believe you're something special.”

“Yes, I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.”

“The only things Mick and I disagree about is the band, the music and what we do.”

“Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.”

“You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe - and you have the Rolling Stones!”