Robert Plant

I made my life ambitious and big and crazy, and basically now I am the helmsman of this mad affair, and I need to take stock. I write these songs, and I live and die in the middle of them, but I can’t really tell you the truth about me, cause I don’t know what it is. It’s a f***ing great journey but it doesn’t all smell of roses.

I still like to get carried away – but passively.

I can’t tell you an answer to that (question on the meaning of life). I can just say live it, be kind, do your best, don’t hurt anybody, and don’t fake orgasms. From a man’s viewpoint, that’s pretty impossible.

I’m not a flowerchild or anything like that… whatever it was.

Presley was definitely a great inspiration to every guy who ever had a hard-on in the whole of the Western world, I should think. He shook everybody well and true, and we just kept on shakin’. But he started it.

The music beckons to those who are listening.

It’s OK to quote from your past. But I’m more interested in quoting from my present and pointing towards the future.

I think that passion and love and pain are all bearable, and they go to make love beautiful.

I think part of picking where you live in New York is accepting who you are. Really looking at yourself and going, ‘Yeah, I’m not cool enough for the West Village.’

I’ve been very lucky so far. I haven’t had any bad experiences as far as fan encounters. They don’t really recognize me. I think it has to do with my hair. I change it all the time. I like changing my hair color and sometimes it’s just not for a role. Usually, I just do it for me.

[On being criticized after admitting she and then-husband Ryan Phillippe have gone to couples therapy] Since when is self-improvement a negative? Why wouldn’t I be interested in psychology? I like to read a lot of psychology books. I’m obsessed with child behavior; I would love to be a child psychologist.

The second I met Zac Efron I thought he was a really cool guy. It’s hard not to have chemistry with someone who is quite attractive.

I can do anything I want to do really, I might as well.

Anything that we think is incredible and beautiful and wonderful, we ascribe to something that we don’t know what it is.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

It’s also that comedians don’t have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They’re writers who perform their own material. It’s more interesting. And they’re sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.

I’m not worried about legacy. I don’t even know what that actually means. I don’t think anyone knows. I hope at some point in my career when my name is mentioned, someone will say “Oh yeah he has a good song!” I’d be happy with that.

I think my level of fame will drop back down. I think it’ll recede. In fact, I know it will. That’s life on Planet Earth. And I’m okay with that. Besides getting tables at restaurants and special treatment at the airport, what else is there?

I’ve never, ever, raised a fist to anybody in my life.

Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts – only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied, and when you are, other people will tend to be satisfied by what you do.

The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.