Explore Quotes by Paul Weller

I didn't imagine getting to 50, let alone still be playing music. When I was 18, I thought it'd all be over by the time I was 21.

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

No one told Miles Davis or BB King to pack it in. John Lee Hooker played literally up to the day he died. Why should pop musicians be any different?

I want to see where and how far I can go as an artist. I look back and see what I've done, and I want to do as much as I can in my lifetime. I love doing it. If I didn't have that passion or love for it, I wouldn't do it.

There was a time in my 40s where I thought, oh, it's all over - not just work, but I'm never going to feel young again, I'm always going to feel like I know what's going to happen, I'll know what to expect. Looking back I don't know if that was a midlife crisis, I don't know - but I don't feel that now. There's possibilities. It gets better.

When I told my mum I was going to play my first gig when I was 14, she couldn't believe it, cause I was painfully shy at that time. But I just done it, put my head down and got through it. And I suppose there's still a little bit of that, even though it's many years later and I've been doing it for a long time.

When I was a kid in Woking, every week you went to the football dance, and every week the top kids would be wearing something different. You were constantly trying to catch up with them - which you could never do because, by the time you'd saved up enough to buy the item, they'd moved on to something else. That's the whole Mod thing, I suppose.

Playing live is what it's all about for me. It's cathartic, it's emotional, it's about communing with people. The way you feel after a gig is a such a powerful thing.

There were aspects of stardom I didn't like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write 'Setting Sons,' I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.

Getting to No. 1 makes everyone feel better; of course it does. But it's swings and roundabouts with these things. Sometimes you make a great record, and it clicks with people. And other times it passes them by; there's nothing you can do. It's still the same record.

I'd like to think I've left something in the world. Without in any way trying to be morbid, but life is very short, and I'd like to think I'd leave some body of work that would inspire other musicians long after I've gone.

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

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.

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

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

When I got into the Beatles, I must have only been about six or seven but old enough to take notice. We used to have an old radiogram which, for readers of a certain age, was like a big cabinet thing with a record player inside it.

I don't think about what I can't do or what I shouldn't be doing. I just think there are endless possibilities musically, really. And I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

I hear an album so many times during the course of making it that when I've just finished it, I don't want to hear it again. After you've taken a little bit of time away from it, you can come back to it, which can be scary. I'm happy with 'Sonik Kicks,' man.

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.

I was always taught as a kid that if there's anything you want in life, you've got to work towards it. I guess that sort of stayed with me, really. But also, for me, from the time I was, like, 10 years old, all I ever wanted to do was be in a band and make music.

We can't stop a baby in Africa from starving to death... but we can afford enough technology and weaponry to blow the world up a million times over.