Top 200 Paul McCartney Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “We were pretty good mates until the Beatles started to split up and Yoko came into it. It was more like old army buddies splitting up on account of wedding bells.”

— Paul McCartney

102. “I don’t think of myself as a legend. I just love what I do. I love playing with my band, I love going to beautiful places and give people good music. I love what I do, I’m very lucky man.”

— Paul McCartney

103. “The music publishing I own is fabulous recording.”

— Paul McCartney

104. “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.”

— Paul McCartney

105. “I was impossible. I don’t know how anyone could have lived with me. For the first time in my life, I was on the scrap heap, an unemployed worker.”

— Paul McCartney

106. “I think the idea of getting out of a traffic jam and getting out of work each week and going and doing all this stuff would be really exhausting.”

— Paul McCartney

107. “I didn’t earn that much in record royalties. You’ve only got to look at my sales in 1980 to figure that one out.”

— Paul McCartney

108. “This was one of the best things about Lennon and McCartney, the competitive element within the team. It was great. But hard to live with.”

— Paul McCartney

109. “Alas, it looks like those unsubstantiated rumours about me are about to come true after all this time...”

— Paul McCartney

110. “It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ I thought, this is it.”

— Paul McCartney

111. “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.”

— Paul McCartney

112. “I believe that in the future meditation could be as commonplace in schools and society as eco-awareness is now. It interests me that an ancient cure may be the solution to a modern problem.”

— Paul McCartney

113. “The Stones also still have a huge following. Mick Jagger leaps around like a crazy dude. And Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts are playing great too.”

— Paul McCartney

114. “My old school in Liverpool is now a performing-arts school, and I kind of teach there – I use the word lightly – but I go there and talk to students.”

— Paul McCartney

115. “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.”

— Paul McCartney

116. “I think a domestic situation can change you and your attitudes. I suppose if you did get a bit content, then you might not write savage lyrics.”

— Paul McCartney

117. “To keep the record straight, it wasn’t always John and Yoko. We’ve all accused one another of various business things; we tend to be pretty paranoid by now, as you can imagine. There’s a lot of money involved.”

— Paul McCartney

118. “Sometimes you write a song in a certain era and it’s got a certain kind of significance.”

— Paul McCartney

119. “Personally, I think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggests that Can’t Buy Me Love is about a prostitute, I draw the line. That’s going too far.”

— Paul McCartney

120. “I’m always writing songs, and I’ve got a bunch that I want to record.”

— Paul McCartney

121. “I had this song called Helter Skelter, which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, ’cuz I like noise.”

— Paul McCartney

122. “It’s like a lot of kids; when you tell them someone’s died, they laugh.”

— Paul McCartney

123. “I knew the words to 25 rock songs, so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti, that got me in. That was my audition.”

— Paul McCartney

124. “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.”

— Paul McCartney

125. “I got my first guitar when I was 15, and I just used to fool about with it, more or less, as time went by, though, I got more interested.”

— Paul McCartney

126. “If anyone had told me in the ’60s that 20 years later we’d still be talking about whether pot was worse than this or that, I’d have said, Oh, come off it, boys.”

— Paul McCartney

127. “It’s a powerful thing hearing your friend on a very beautiful song.”

— Paul McCartney

128. “My arrest was on every bloody TV set. The other prisoners all knew who I was and asked me to sing.”

— Paul McCartney

129. “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.”

— Paul McCartney

130. “Where I come from, you don’t really talk about how much you’re earning. Those things are private. My dad never told my mum how much he was earning. I’m certainly not going to tell the world. I’m doing well.”

— Paul McCartney

131. “I think the minute you’re full up and have had enough to eat, then that’s time to retire.”

— Paul McCartney

132. “We don’t eat anything that has to be killed for us. We’ve been through a lot and we’ve reached a stage where we really value life.”

— Paul McCartney

133. “George Martin, he’s very good at a very sort of lush, sweet arrangement.”

— Paul McCartney

134. “I guess the ultimate luxury professionally is to be able to change your direction, to work in another medium.”

— Paul McCartney

135. “It’s been my ambition for about 30 years to do a full- length animation film.”

— Paul McCartney

136. “The strange thing is, we never owned our own publishing; it was always getting bought and sold.”

— Paul McCartney

137. “Someone like John would want to end the Beatle period and start the Yoko period. He wouldn’t like either to interfere with the other.”

— Paul McCartney

138. “I never really got on that well with Yoko anyway. Strangely enough, I only started to get to know her after John’s death.”

— Paul McCartney

139. “John could write a mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a happy childhood.”

— Paul McCartney

140. “Lyricists play with words.”

— Paul McCartney

141. “I have not practiced how to be a singer without an instrument.”

— Paul McCartney

142. “When you got a job to do, you got to do it well. You gotta give the other fellow hell.”

— Paul McCartney

143. “The thing you must remember is that I’m the Number One John Lennon fan. I love him to this day and I always did love him.”

— Paul McCartney

144. “When we were kids we always used to say, ‘Okay, whoever dies first, get a message through.’ When John died, I thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ll get a message,’ because I know he knew the deal. I haven’t had a message from John.”

— Paul McCartney

145. “At the office where the paper grows, she takes a break, drinks another coffee, and she finds it hard to stay awake. It’s just another day.”

— Paul McCartney

146. “Having a beard is natural. When you think about it, shaving it off is quite weird.”

— Paul McCartney

147. “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!”

— Paul McCartney

148. “My mum died when I was 14. That is a kind of strange age to lose a mother. John lost his mum when he was 17.”

— Paul McCartney

149. “Linda’s at her best when she’s doing you a meal at home. That’s when you see Linda. She cooks, she looks after the kids.”

— Paul McCartney

150. “She is the rock ‘n’ roll queen. Weirdly enough, that is one of the things her reign will be remembered for. Queen Elizabeth I, we remember Raleigh; Queen Elizabeth II it’s gonna be the Beatles.”

— Paul McCartney