LEMMY

I'd never have left Hawkwind if I hadn't been fired.

I was in the Rockin' Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain. A lot of photos were taken of us next to milk churns.

It's much more fun to be full of hope than pessimism any day of the week.

I wanted to be a farmer; actually, I wanted to be a horse-breeder. And I had the stallions... but then I heard Little Richard, and that was it.

I listen to everything from Ravel to the Bee Gees.

As for what other people think of me, I don't care. I don't care and never have.

I learned that if I had known how much of this Nazi memorabilia there was to collect, I never would have started in the first place. It's crowding me out of my house.

I'm not a poker player; I play slot machines.

I can't say I was really that surprised when the doctor told me I needed a defibrillator inserted in my chest. When you've lived the life that I have, you should always expect something like that to crop up. I was not a good boy.

I don't really have the voice for love songs, do I?

I've always been alone. I grew up alone. I like it that way. Even when I'm in an arena surrounded by 10,000 people, I'm alone in my head.

You learn all the best stuff in life after you leave school.

Touring is too much fun to stop.

It just seems like we get more popular every eight years or so. For some reason, it becomes cool to like Motorhead again.

The hippie era was a wonderful time because we still believed we could make the world a better place.

Everyone gets depressed. But what do you do? You just go through it.

I wasn't very worried about the Cold War; I was busy being a musician.

I don't know if love exists, not the kind that keeps. I think love's an infatuation that turns into a habit, because you can't keep that passion going. You get used to people, and that's death for me - I like to be surprised.

Am I going to get my warts removed? I might do, but I'm certainly not going to auction them on the Internet.

Kids are generally rotten until the age of about six, when they become people.

You can't win fame; you have to earn it. If you're given fame without working for it, then you're not going to be ready for it.

I was brought up by two women: my mother and my grandmother.

I didn't really want to be in the lifestyle without the music. And I didn't want to be in the music without the lifestyle.

Gay people are made and not born.

The thing about death is it's so final, isn't it, really? As far as we know... Nobody has ever come back and told us about it.