Robert Plant

If you’re a singer, you can never say this is where the voyage ends, the job is never done. Once you have got it, you cannot sit on it. I have to try and change the landscape, whatever it is. I have to find a new place to ply my trade, to get lost in another place, and locate myself again. I’m an older man now and so it’s even more important.

[on accepting his CBE] I owe everything to the musicians I work with. From the UK to Africa to Tennessee, it is their brilliance that I bounce off. Alone I’m nothing.

I absolutely adore and idolize women. All women. I think they are all amazing. The female musicians I’ve met have been far more inspiring than the male ones. Women tend to be much more creative and ambitious. I think I may have been a woman in a past life.

The whole idea of music, from the beginning of time, was for people to be happy.

I’m like one of those firecrackers that goes off in your pocket occasionally. I’m not really struggling with it as much as the people around me. But at least I’m not doing too much damage to anybody or to myself. It’s just the condition I’m aware of.

I don’t think I’ve aged gracefully.

I was rapping as a hobby. It was something I did for my friends and just played around on ideas and stuff like that.

Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles.

You know, people can’t fall in love with me just because I’m good at what I do.

I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.

I was the editor of the school newspaper and in drama club and choir, so I was not a popular girl in the traditional sense, but I think I was known for being relatively scathing.

I love old music, old movies, screwball comedies, vintage clothes and basically I’m an old-fashioned gal.

But I like to listen to demos. I like to hear the finished product. It’s like listening to a song – I mean, a story. If you’re going to sit here and tell me a story, I just like to listen. I don’t want to make them up.

Ask a boxer: In the third round, when he hit you from the side on your ear, how did that specifically feel? You wouldn’t ask a boxer that. Because you know they’re there to fight. Meaning now you know I’m here to fight. I’m here to fight for the re-education of what celebrity is.

When in trouble, take a bath and wash your hair.

I don’t display emotions. I have every feeling that everyone else has but I’ve developed ways to suppress them. Anger is one of my most comfortable feelings.

I don’t know many singers who actually do like the sound of their own voice.

I love funky styles. Not preppy or rock, just funky! Vanessa: (on her mom) She gave up so much for me. She moved many times so I could follow my career. Vanessa: I’ve always had problems with guys!

Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn’t allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

This is between us! You know this is the best thing for the company.

In an interview, Paris Hilton said that of her and her sister, ‘People love to hate us. But when you know us, you love us. And if you really get to know us, you get gonorrhea’.