Buckingham: "Confounding people's expectations was a way to maintain integrity."

Buckingham: "You just get out there and be what you want to be. That's part of evolving and part of staying true to yourself - part of remaining alive in a real authentic, long-term sense creatively: not listening to what other people tell you to be."

Buckingham: "I'm trying to break down preconceptions about what pop music is."

Buckingham: "When I work alone, it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits, and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive, subconscious process."

Buckingham: "The thought of being on my own really terrified me. But then I realized being alone is really a cleansing thing."

Buckingham: "That's one of the real downfalls of celebrity. You're something that's about you at some point, and that gets latched onto and pumped into the machinery. Then you start having a million other people telling you who you are, and what you should be doing and why, and it's easy to lose your way."

Buckingham: "I'm not really concerned with the outer success."

Buckingham: "I'm not that knowledgeable with the guitar - I just find ways that are pretty creative, but it's all within the framework and the limitations of what I can do."

Buckingham: "I don't read music. I've never had a lesson. I don't know anything about music other than what my inner knowledge is."

Buckingham: "When you make music, and even if it's commercially successful, it doesn't mean that it's going to hold up. It takes time to sort of take stock of what you've done and whether it's got legs and whether it's going to really have a place."

Buckingham: "If you want to be an artist in the long run, it isn't necessarily a good axiom to repeat formulas over and over until they're used up."

Buckingham: "It hasn't always been easy, but you get to a point where you're not doing the solo stuff with any kind of expectation in terms of commercial or a business outcome, you're doing it because you believe in this."

Buckingham: "When I work alone, my process is like painting. With Fleetwood Mac, it's more like movie making."

Buckingham: "What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist."

Buckingham: "The only way I've been able to keep my sanity is to pull back when I feel like it's time to pull back."

Buckingham: "Sometimes you can do the work in the moment, and you don't know whether it's going to really have meaning once time has elapsed."

Buckingham: "As I've grown as an artist, I've gotten more and more in touch with my center, and that center is voice and guitar."

Buckingham: "When you become successful on the level that Fleetwood Mac did, it gives you financial freedom, which should allow you to follow your impulses. But oddly enough, they become much harder to follow."

Buckingham: "I love to be in the studio. That's what I like to do best."

Buckingham: "A lot of people who have gone to music school have gotten their individuality stomped out of them. It becomes harder to find those instincts."

Buckingham: "You could say that Fleetwood Mac is a bit of a dysfunctional family, but we are a family."

Buckingham: "They tried to get me to use a pick when I first joined the band. They had certain things they thought were appropriate. I tried to adapt as much as I could."

Buckingham: "All of my style came from listening to records."

Buckingham: "Creating a set list is like making a running order for an album. Certain things get pitted against one another that make more sense. One song sets another one off, or it might diminish it. You're just constantly looking for the next thing that's gonna make sense in a particular place."

Buckingham: "I also learned to be more confident, to trust my instincts more."

Buckingham: "That's the only way to do it. Just like an actor. You can get a great performance if you do a bunch of takes and edit it. You find the moments and string them together."

Buckingham: "I just find things that work and embellish them."

Buckingham: "I had to seal off my feelings about Stevie while seeing her every day and having to help her, too. But you get on with it. What was happening to the band was much bigger than any of that."

Buckingham: "Most people don't know who the hell I am. But that's not really important."

Buckingham: "I'm in the position where I don't have to make commercial music to feed myself, so I have the luxury of being more experimental, if that's what I choose to do. I guess I've earned the right by being in the business for a while and paying the dues and taking the lumps."

Buckingham: "I put out an album once every four or five years and it's kind of like starting over every time."