Robert Plant

What I recall for the first two years is my daughter not really knowing who I was and getting rather agitated when I came back off tour, as she thought I’d come to rob the house.

There are always generic terms like ‘Americana’, but there are no boundaries as to where it can go.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you

Music means communication to me. I say ‘listen you people out there, listen to my music, let’s be one.’ Music is a friend to me when I am lonely, when I am blue. You can’t define music ’cause music is cosmos and it knows no barrier or definition. You have to feel music to dig it

You can’t even imagine how it felt to have a cassette that you could take with you with a microphone so you could put down an idea and not have to hum it a million times to remember what it was.

There’s so much of this beautiful planet that is still actually spectacular and stimulating. There are so many amazing people that you meet along the way. By using my career as the wind in the sails of my adventures, I could see so many things and so many people that I might have missed had my career gone a different direction.

I’ll be ready for it to happen and that way it won’t happen. It’s a burden, being able to control situations with my hyper-vigilance, but it’s my lot in life.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

I always thought that was so strange that people would try to corral you and pigeonhole you in one category and not play you anywhere else.

Yes, it’s that special time of year where we voluntarily imbibe pumpkin spice lattes, the coffee that tastes like a candle.

You’re better off being a brick layer if you’re going to play guitar than a sheet metal worker.

[On his first red carpet experience] I walked out the wrong car door and started walking into the crowd, An interviewer said, ‘Give your best horror scream,’ and Stan did this great scream and I was too much of a wimp to do one. It was pathetic!

I don’t have any illusions anymore. The illusion that rock ‘n’ roll could change anything – I don’t believe that. I’ve changed. Who would have ever thought that I’d end up saying that I want to be an all-around entertainer? But that’s what I want to be.

When it comes down to the music, it’s just you and the microphone. It’s not you and the record execs.

That is not a functional use of language. That is a drunk driver crashing a pickup truck full of alphabet soup.

I would love to have kids someday; I actually can’t imagine not having them. My parents have been married for 36 years. They (Lance, a mover, and Sandy, a nurse) have a pretty honest, straightforward relationship that I hope to have myself. – On having her own kids somedayYou never really know the person you’re sleeping beside. You have a right to your secrets, but that’s very difficult when you’re supposed to be someone’s partner. – On marriage as a minefield of secrets, as suggested in Married Life

It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to always be nice.

Last year in L.A. county 150 out of 151 incumbents ran unopposed. And come on. They could at least go through the motions of pretending there was another candidate. Just throw a robe on a pelican and tape a gavel to his wing. Or – I’ll tell you what – you’re in L.A. Just pretend you’re considering Blake Lively for the job. Movie studios do that all the time.

No one wants to quit when he’s losing and no one wants to quit when he’s winning.

I have just been saying whatever the f**k I want. That’s always a breath of fresh air… everyone is so filtered these days. I’m just back to being reckless and being a Southside, Jamaica, Queens, New York rapper

On the TV show that I just did, I worked with a female director called Ryan Case who is amazing. [But] it suddenly occurred to me on my second day of filming with her that I’ve been doing this since I was nine — so that’s like 19 years now — and she’s the first female director I’ve worked with on screen. And that is crazy. When I actually step back, that is an insane thing.