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“The biggest mistake in the world is to think that you have to emulate somebody else."

“Boredom? To me, that’s an illness. You could lock me up in solitary for weeks on end and I’d keep myself amused."

“You don’t know me. I know me."

“The people who’ve told me to stop doing this and that and they’ve croaked … I’ve had about three doctors who told me, ‘If you carry on like this, you will be dead in six months.’ I went to their funerals."

“All these gadgets now—it’s all about anything to defy the interior, to defy dealing with yourself."

SELF-TRUST

“I didn’t ask to be an example to other people … All I know is myself. And I am the only one I can actually trust. I have many, many friends and I trust them a lot of the way down the line, but when it comes to life and death, I am the only one I can trust."

“I don’t really have to promise myself anything. That’s all part of the wonderfulness that is me. Like they say in America, ‘If it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it.’ ”

—when asked what his

New Year’s resolutions are

“I’ve always done things on a very instinctive basis. I think brains have gotten in the way of too many things."

“I’d rather take someone on face value and totally screw up."

SHOW BUSINESS

“My first taste of show business: when my voice broke and they didn’t want me in the choir anymore. Suddenly it was, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ I think that was when I stopped being a good boy and started to be a yob."

“The art of it is to create, for two hours, your own country, Stonesland—for you and several hundred thousand people."

“Rock ’n’ roll bands normally play in garages, clubs, bars, and juke joints. Try and translate that into a football stadium."

“If you can’t do it in a small joint, you ain’t gonna do it in a big one."

“They can see how many spots you’ve got and how many teeth are left and whether your eyeballs are pinned. That’s all over in the first few minutes, so then it’s just a matter of them enjoying themselves."

—on audiences in small venues

“It’s hard being out front. You gotta actually believe that you’re semidivine when you’re out there, then come off stage and know you ain’t. And that’s the problem: Eventually the reaction time gets slower. You still think you’re semidivine when you’re in the limo and semidivine at the hotel, until you’re semidivine for the whole goddamn tour."

—on singers

“My one worry is falling over onstage."

“When you play onstage you’re so conscious of it that you try to forget and just concentrate on playing. You try to ignore the audience as much as possible. If you think too much about the audience, you will just dry up and paralyze yourself."

“I’d rather the Mafia than Decca.’’

“It’s rare that we do an American tour when someone doesn’t die."

“I go onstage to get some fucking peace and quiet."

“Laundry."

—relating the biggest problem

of being on the road

SLEEP (and/or LACK OF IT)

It’s part of the “laboratory experiment” of life—where your body is an instrument and you can set it at different levels and numbers. Altered states made easy.

“It’s the most amazing experience. You lose track of time after three nights. An hour becomes a minute. A minute can become an hour. Time’s meaningless, sleep becomes superfluous. Everything becomes a beautiful blur, until you fall over and break your nose."

—on the art of staying awake for days

“When you sleep, everything is so neatly put into compartments of that day and that day, and I did that on that day, but if you stay up for five or six days, the memory goes back into one long period with no breaks at all, and the days don’t mean anything anymore."

“Nine [days of no sleep] was as far as I could go. And loads of four and fives … But after three days, another thing clicks in. It’s a fascinating world … It was a laboratory. As far as I was concerned, the whole thing was a scientific expedition."

“Life was so interesting for nine days that I couldn’t give it up. Not even for a minute."

—on staying awake for nine days

SOCIETY

“Everything