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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Paul Weller Quotes

People say that if you’re still angry at 52, you’re not an angry young man, just a grumpy old git.

– Paul Weller

It is nice to make a record and people like it, and it’s encouraging.

– Paul Weller

Being a musician is a noble profession.

– Paul Weller

I wear jeans and a T-shirt sometimes. I just like clothes – since the first time I can remember, like age ten or eleven; I was just obsessed with music and clothes. Just like a lot of people in England from my generation.

– Paul Weller

Playing music is a lifetime’s work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

– Paul Weller

Going to college was never an option. I was passionate about music, but how much talent I actually had was another matter.

– Paul Weller

If you’re into a certain band, you’re into the way they dress.

– Paul Weller

When I listen to a record, or when I’m making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don’t only listen to the guitar player.

– Paul Weller

The first thing I bought that was really stylish was in 1969 when I was eleven. I saved up for a black, grey and white tie-dye grandad vest. It was too big – they weren’t catering for kids my age – and hung off me, but I loved it.

– Paul Weller

I am aware of the words ‘national treasure’ being attached to me occasionally. It just makes me feel old.

– Paul Weller

For me, the best thing I can do is play live. The best way for me to put over what I’m trying to do is to play live. Whether it’s an acoustic show, electric or whatever… if I shine at all, that’s where it all really happens – it just took me a while to rediscover that.

– Paul Weller

The Jam went through a phase of wearing satin jackets. But that was pre-getting signed and making it, when we were still playing the pubs and clubs – around ’75. Shocking, really – what would you call them apart from ‘horrible?’ We’d wear these white zip-up bomber jackets with black kind of loon pants and black and white shoes.

– Paul Weller

Right from the start with music, I was like, ‘I’m just going to do this, and I don’t care about anything else. There are certain things you have to give up, even at 13, 14: your Friday and Saturday nights, having a regular girl, lots of things like that. I look at Amy Winehouse, and I think perhaps she just don’t want to do it that much.

– Paul Weller

I get labelled as just being about one thing, but there’s lots of layers to what I do.

– Paul Weller

There is a shy side to me that evaporates when I play on stage, and I like that. I think it’s another facet of my character, and I need to do that.

– Paul Weller

People say you make your best work when you’re in despair and all that, and at your lowest – but for me, I think happiness makes you positive, and I think that’s a good creative place to write from.

– Paul Weller

In the ’90s, I think I rediscovered my guitar. The Jam was obviously very guitar-based, but in the Style Council I just got really disillusioned with playing the guitar. The further it went on, the less and less I played, to a point where I couldn’t pick it up any more.

– Paul Weller

I take my hat off to people like the Stones, but it’s not for me. I couldn’t do that. Jagger is brilliant and long may he rock. I couldn’t make my career out of old songs; it would do my head in.

– Paul Weller

I don’t really wanna talk about politics, I’m not clever enough.

– Paul Weller

I’m not big on rap, to be honest. I just don’t get it. It’s angry people shouting. I like a song, melodies, people singing.

– Paul Weller

All my children inspire me in life, and that always comes out in the writing.

– Paul Weller

I’m always looking for something. Not in an unhappy way. I just like to try different things. I don’t want to be morbid, but I’m not getting any younger.

– Paul Weller

I don’t like the royal family, I don’t like the establishment, I don’t like the civil service.

– Paul Weller

Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later and it means something to us, and it always will do. It’s incredibly important.

– Paul Weller

I’ve bought clothes based on record covers. Particularly from the formative music that turned me onto it in the first place when I was a kid, with the Beatles and the Small Faces. A lot of those Sixties soul artists were in really sharp sharkskin or mohair suits, and Motown artists looked amazing.

– Paul Weller

It’s quite liberating to get to a certain age, ‘cos you’re not chasing number one hits or trying to be an international superstar. I’ve done all that. I’m not out to prove much more to anyone but myself really, to be an artist and see if there is a new undiscovered music out there for me to make.

– Paul Weller

I never saw myself as a spokesman for a generation. It was all a bit heavy for me. I saw myself as a songwriter and wrote for myself, which I still do, and I also wanted to communicate with my audience.

– Paul Weller

Led Zeppelin would never have reformed if he or Jimmy Page were bald.

– Paul Weller

I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you’ve got no control over it. I’m not one of those people who says, ‘I’ve got to write a song every day.’ I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I’m ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn’t any more. It’s just how it is.

– Paul Weller

There have been records I’ve been really, really pleased with that haven’t connected with people. But I felt good about them.

– Paul Weller

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