McCartney: "One of my biggest thrills still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen."

McCartney: "Listen to the colour of your dreams."

McCartney: "Look, people are allowed their own opinions and they don't always coincide with yours. As an artist you just have to keep plugging on."

McCartney: "I don’t have any desire to learn. I feel it’s like a voodoo, that it would spoil things if I actually learnt how things are done."

McCartney: "I realized marvelling at nature was a deep pleasure of mine."

McCartney: "The interesting thing about The Beatles was: The music was one thing, but we kind of symbolized a certain kind of freedom at a time when people of our generation were just growing up and just becoming adults."

McCartney: "I hate the idea of success robbing you of your private life."

McCartney: "Music is like a psychiatrist. You can tell your guitar things that you can't tell people. And it will answer you with things people can't tell you."

McCartney: "I don't work at being ordinary."

McCartney: "Painting is similar to music. You get a couple or words or notes or chords that excite you, and you just follow them and add a bit more and see where it takes you. That's the thrill for me. It still is a thrill, which is amazing after all this time."

McCartney: "Fight for the right to live in freedom!"

McCartney: "When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do."

McCartney: "Putting two songs together, I've always loved that trick when it works."

McCartney: "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.'"

McCartney: "It's also not unusual for writers to look backward as that's your pool of resources."

McCartney: "When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that's why I can't eat it. Simple as that."

McCartney: "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."

McCartney: "I like the idea that people hear my stuff, and if it’s commercially successful, that’s a good sign that it’s being heard."

McCartney: "Why would I retire? Sit at home and watch TV? No thanks. I’d rather be out playing."

McCartney: "The most important ingredient to making a song work is the magic. You've got a melody, you've got words, but on the more successful songs, there's a sort of magic glow that just happens and you can feel it happening. It just makes the songs sort of roll out."

McCartney: "But with writers, there’s nothing wrong with melancholy. It’s an important colour in writing."

McCartney: "I think that, particularly in the old days, the spirit of The Beatles seemed to suggest something very hopeful and youthful."

McCartney: "The trouble with fame and riches is that you have more than one guitar."

McCartney: "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."

McCartney: "Criticism didn’t really stop us and it shouldn’t ever stop anyone, because critics are only the people who can’t get a record deal themselves."

McCartney: "There are only four people who knew what The Beatles were about anyway."

McCartney: "I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course."

McCartney: "A lot of artists use memories. A lot of prose writers, a lot of poets, a lot of songwriters, refer back to something. Generally it's all you've got, unless you're brilliant and can write totally in the now."

McCartney: "Having a beard is natural. When you think about it, shaving it off is quite weird."

McCartney: "It’s hard to follow my own act. But the only answer to that would be to give up after The Beatles. I only had two alternatives. Give up or carry on."

McCartney: "Meditation is a lifelong gift. It’s something you can call on at any time."

McCartney: "When I left the Beatles, I made an album called McCartney that I played everything on. And it was kind of a cool experience. I felt like a professor in a laboratory, just crafting stuff and adding this, and putting this on and moving the microphone, and it was very homemade."

McCartney: "A hundred years from now, people will listen to the music of The Beatles the same way we listen to Mozart."

McCartney: "I saw that Meryl Streep said, 'I just want to do my job well.' And really, that's all I'm ever trying to do."

McCartney: "I had this song called 'Helter Skelter', which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise."

McCartney: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."

McCartney: "It gets dangerous when you start believing your own legacy. That's why I've not gone back."

McCartney: "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!"