Quotes by Elton John

Stolen moments in the smoky room monday mornings that would come too soon crazy summers that would never end when the time was spent loving you.

Just you and me at a crossroads then Ain't it funny how we were old friends accidentally thrown together did we intend to be the romantic novel you never want to end.

Everything I thought I'd hate about having children the crying, the screaming, nothing fazes me. I love it all, and it's relaxed me.

I'm gonna be high I'm a rocket man.

Oh no no no I'm a rocket man. Rocketman burning out his fuse up here alone.

Welcome home my dear, you are arrived.

Live for each second without hesitation.

I am the biggest technophobe of all time.

My mum always used to buy a record every Friday.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

I'm very generous.

I'm a very wealthy man.

I'd always lived with people -- my family, or had people living with me, because I'd never liked being on my own.

There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex.

It's just so wonderful to have someone in the house like a child to turn your attention to. It's not about you anymore, it's about this lovely little human being.

I am so in the past. I'm such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.

I could never go onstage in denims.

You went and flipped the switch and turned me positive
When I was negative
I've been stumbling around like a metal man
On the graveyard shift
I am your robot, and I'm programmed to love you
My serial number is 44357.

Boredom's a pastime that one soon acquired
Where you get to the stage, where you're not even tired
Kicking your heels 'til the time comes around
To pick up your bags and head out of town.

Ever since I had that interview in which I said I was bisexual it seems twice as many people wave at me in the streets.

It's getting late have you seen my mates, Ma tell me when the boys get here, It's seven o'clock and I want to rock, Want to get a belly full of beer.

I love to work. It fascinates me. And I love seeing who's coming up, who's got the charisma to last, who's got the intelligence to move on to other things. I'm so glad now that I'm stuck behind the piano, because when you're getting older it's very hard to waddle around the stage.

Holy Moses, let us live in peace. Let us strive to find a way to make all hatred cease. There's a man over there, what's his colour I don't care, he's my brother, let us live in peace.

I was sitting in the classroom trying to look intelligent in case the teacher looked at me.

You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.

Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel.

Rocket Man, burning out his fuse up here alone.

I think people should be free to engage in any sexual practices they choose; they should draw the line at goats, though.

I'm lucky enough and wealthy enough to be able to buy photographs and buy art that inspires me from day to day. I don't want a Picasso on my wall; it's great art, but it's dead art to me. I'd rather have a photograph by someone I've never heard of that really inspires me.

A great editor is the most valuable thing you can have as an artist because, as you said, sometimes you get too close to something. I think, apart from your talent, that's why you have the career you have -- because you have great people behind you.

I used to take hostages in my relationships and not let people be independent. It always ended in disaster, because you take away people's identity and they end up full of resentment.

I love places that have an incredible history. I love the Italian way of life, I love the food, I love the people, I love the attitudes of Italians.

I'm so proud to be on a Kate Bush record; she's always marched to the beat of her own drum.

Love's like a junkie, addiction's a fact. Passion's a monkey, you can't keep off your back.

A couple of sounds that I really like are the sounds of a switchblade and a motor bike.

People who mock rap and say, I don't like it, they should go and check out Kanye West in the studio rapping, or Marshall, Eminem, when he's in the studio. It's a phenomenon. Don't knock it until you've seen it. It may not be your cup of tea, but don't ridicule it.

Cause what the hell is wrong with expressing yourself, trying to be me?

It's awful to be afraid of sex, but I'm afraid that's what the '50s did to people. It was just sex is disgusting, it shouldn't be talked about. Nudity is disgusting, we just don't talk about those kinds of things.

I'm a great lover of children. I never thought that one day I'd actually be a father, but I'm very pleased that I changed my mind. Children are extremely important. They are the future of the world.

You can work as hard as you like, and plan as carefully as you want, but there are moments when it's just about a hunch, about trusting your instincts, or about fate.

Anyone who lip-synchs in public on stage when you pay 75 pounds to see them should be shot.

I've been going to Russia since 1979. I've been going quite frequently, and I've always had a wonderful rapport with the Russian audiences and with the Russian people.

When people go to rehab and come out, they go through a difficult period, a lot of people. I never had that. I was so glad to be rid of all that crap that for me, to learn again and to function as a human being and learn how to participate in the human race again was just pure joy.

I really appreciate my performing so much better, as I get older. I don't take it for granted anymore. I really relish it and love it.

Basically, I wanted redemption for the way I lived my life beforehand, and that was the drugs, the drink, the loose sex, whatever.

Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder, under the covers, and I guess that's why they call it the blues.

Don't be afraid to let her into your heart and when your down, don't try to carry the whole world on your shoulders.

Don't you know Im still standing better than I ever did.  Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid.  I'm still standing after all this time.

I've always been dead set against festivals, really suspicious and wary.

On a street of right and wrong in every inch of sadness, rocks and tanks go hand in hand with madness.

Tina Turner gave me the highway blues.

It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics to set you on your feet again.

I tried to commit suicide one day. It was a very Woody Allen-type suicide. I turned on the gas and left all the windows open.

The Less I Say The More My Work Gets Done.

What a scandal, if I die. Yeah, I'm gonna kill myself, get a little headline news.

I don't think there can ever be too many messages about AIDS. If you stop the education process, then people are going to think the problem is all over and done with. They'll think that it's OK to go and have sex again. Education is essential, especially among young people.

We have come so far. It's become a real bipartisan cause, which I'm very happy to see. And in the case of America, and it's -- certainly, without America, we'd be facing catastrophe.

I was ready to approach her with my English charm, when her brass knuckled boyfriend grabbed me by the arm.

It was insanity, but it sounded romantic.

And we have come so far like that. I mean, the advances on the medication side have been enormous, and the advances on the human side have been enormous. But we still have this stigma to get rid of, and then we really will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I think that's the graveyard of musicians, playing cabaret. I think I'd rather be dead than work in cabaret. It's just so depressing.

Don't judge the picture by the frame, every man is not the same.

He'd been drinking in a bar downtown, when he thought he heard a choir of angels singing in the Tiki Lounge. And that's when he got religion.

The Backstreet Boys can sing their asses off. I'm not so sure about those other boy bands. But Backstreet Boys have my ultimate respect.

That's just a part of being an artist: you can't write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you'd be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

I love the way the American trade magazines never give anybody a bad review because they're afraid the advertising will be taken out. It's so hysterical.

My mother encouraged me and was very great about me being gay, but she always encouraged me to follow my musical dreams, which I'm very grateful for.

I am in deep shock. I have lost a beloved friend George Michael -- the kindest, most generous soul and a brilliant artist. My heart goes out to his family and all of his fans.

I'll not complain about your boring life, if you just leave me to mine.

I've been coming to America since 1970, and it's like my second home, but I've never felt such a divided country, ever. I didn't think it would get to this point, and it breaks my heart.

The French are useless. They can't organize a piss-up in a brewery.

I don't think you can recreate anything from the past. You can not do it. If you're going to go out and imitate a Motown sound, you can't do it, it's impossible because of the studios and players involved and the atmosphere.

Rock and roll came in and changed my life and changed the whole music scene forever, and then I grew to love RandB and Motown and all black music, gospel music. But I never dismiss any form of music. I listen to everything.

Sometimes when I'm flying over the Alps I think, 'that's like all the cocaine I sniffed.'

The world is near escalating to World War Three and where are the leaders of each religion? Why aren't they having a conclave; why aren't they coming together?

When stars collide, like you and I, no shadow blocks the sun -- The One.

I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful I'm a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don't like it, fair enough. But give me a break.

No tears to damn you when jealousy burns.

Once you have people around you who don't question you, you're in a dangerous place.

And it's one more beer and I don't hear you any more.

I'm a juvenile product of the working class, who's best friend floats in the bottom of a glass.

I love drag queens and I love going to see them perform because those people have got so much character and bravery. Such balls! I love people with balls.

The work became like the drug addiction, the clothes, anything in my life. It became -- it's become an addiction. I'm addicted to working.

This is a tremendous assest for the club, a tremendous headache lifted from our shoulders, really.

Sweet freedom whispered in my ear, you're a butterfly, and butterflies are free to fly, fly away, high-away, bye-bye.

Sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees as an artist.

I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people. Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. But there are so many Christian people I know who are gay and love their religion.

Simon Cowell and I are great friends and we wind each other up. Rod Stewart and I do the same thing.

I'm glad I've given up drugs and alcohol. It would be awful to be like Keith Richards. He's pathetic. It's like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young.

On Keith Richards: He's like a monkey with arthritis.

Hold me closer tiny dancer, count the headlights on the highway. Lay me down in sheets of linen, you had a busy day today.

Don't let the sun go down on me

Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see

I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free

But losing everything is like the sun going down on me.

I just wish more of my fellow queers would come out sometimes. It's nice out here, you know?

There ain't been no angels in heaven around since God invented girls.

I grew up at my grandmother's house, and she had a beautiful garden. I used to hate mowing the lawn and weeding, which is what you do when you're a kid. I loathe gardening, but I love gardens, and I have two beautiful gardens.

Blue jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band. Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man. Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand.

This overload is edging me further out to sea, I need to put some distances between overkill and me.

I'm so over the tattoos and the T-shirts and rings through the noses. It's not pretty, it's not pleasant, it's not exciting. Please stop it now.

I've reached the stage of my life where learning is so important to me. I go through the past enough when I play my old songs on stage. And I don't mind doing that. But I want to think about the future.

Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

You and your oven are capable of great things,Remember, no two ovens are the same.

I can't think of anything until I've got printed words in front of me. I never wake up in the middle of the night with a song in my head.

It was also great to have the Backstreet Boys appear on stage with me because I have gotten to know them all a little bit just recently, and not only are they great performers, but they also very hard working professionals and really nice guys.

I'm cold as a razor blade, inches from madness.

There is such a thing as good interference from your record label. I don't think I get enough interference from my record label.

Unless you show off you're not going to get noticed.

After claws and feathers, he took skin and bone, shaped it like an hour glass and made the angels moan.

I get high in the evening sniffing pots of glue.

You can cage the songbird, but you can't make her sing. And you can trap the free bird, but you'll have to clip her wings.

Getting paid for being laid, guess that's the name of the game.

I've dodged so many bullets. Not just because of unsafe sex, but because of the amount of drugs I did, the amount of alcohol, the amount of work I was doing. I started the Elton John AIDS Foundation because I got so lucky.

We can't keep thinking of gay people as being ostracised; we can't keep thinking of Muslim people as being ostracised because of the fundamentalism that occurs in Islam. Muslim people have to do something about speaking up about it. We can't judge a book by its cover.

I went up to Prince and said 'I'm a big fan of your stuff' and he looked at me and just walked off...left me standing there like a ****. He's a prat, but a clever prat.

She's got electric boots, a mohair suit, you know I read it in a magazine.

I rarely wear tennis shoes. I'm 5' 8', I hate being short.

Top dog, top hat, move that muscle, move that fat.

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.

I lived my teenage years in my 20s when I sort of left home and became Elton John success, then it became Elton John excess... Everything I couldn't do when I was younger I did 10 times over. I was having the time of my life. I was becoming the person that I wanted to be.

I guess that's why they call it the blues, time on my hands could be time spent with you.

It's very important to have two tiaras when you're on the road. You never know when you'll be invited to something really formal.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: Is it going to happen this time? You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

Everything I thought I'd hate about having children -- the crying, the screaming -- nothing fazes me. I love it all and it's relaxed me.

I'm going to fight for human rights, whether I do it silently behind the scenes or vocally so that I get locked up. I can't just sit back; it's not in my nature. I can't sit back and blindly ignore it, and I won't.

Fame attracts lunatics.

I hate to say this, but I always listen to the music and the instrumentation first, and then grab on to the lyrics later.

I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly.

I wasn't involved in anything. I wasn't out -- you know, I know I wasn't in ACT UP. I wasn't with Larry Kramer. I wasn't by his side. I wasn't saying what I should do, because, by all accounts, I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. And I was living in a complete bubble of self-absorption.

There's a time for everyone, If they only learn, that the twisting kaleidoscope moves us all in turn.

I'm still as fascinated with the music business as ever. I'd love to do an electronic album like Prodigy or Underworld. I really like that sort of music.

My old man is drunker than a barrel full of monkeys, but my old lady she don't care.

You can beat her, but don't mistreat her. Oh, don't believe that woman please.

Cocaine made me talk forever. The most nonsensical rubbish that you could ever think of.

I don't want a Jennifer Lopez wedding or anything like that. A commitment ceremony would be a nice thing to do.

I really don't need the public's money. I'd like to have something on the internet with charitable donation optional, where anyone can download my music for free.

When your persona begins to take over your music and becomes more important, you enter a dangerous place. Once you have people around you who don't question you, you're in a dangerous place.

I'm very relaxed. I'm very happy with my personal life.

Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me.

Instead of more violence why isn't there a meeting of religious leaders. It's all got to be dialogue -- that's the only way. Get everybody from each religion together and say 'Listen, this can't go on. Why do we have all this hatred?'

Shock waves to a tired brain, sends that hungry lady to my door again. She's my shelter from the storm when I feel the rain, entertaining white powder.

We have a society where every hit maker and TV presenter is gay.

The only thing the record companies put out now is 'Best of,'

At heart I've always been a music fan. That part of me has never changed since I was a little kid, sitting in a room watching a record go round, looking at the colour of the labels.

Don't show up around here until your social worker's helped.

What record companies do these days is drain the blood dry of an album, take six singles off it, and harm the longevity of artists' careers by doing it.

I do like my rock stars to be a little larger than life. I don't mind the earnest ones at all, but I do like a bit of individuality.

So I am deeply saddened and shocked over the current legislation that is now in place against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community here in Russia. In my opinion, it is inhumane and it is isolating.

Simon Cowell and I are great friends, and we wind each other up. Rod Stewart and I do the same thing.

In the '50s you weren't taught about sex whatsoever. It was never just talked about. People used to snoop behind their curtains and look at the neighbors. And if a girl became pregnant in your part of the world, she was shipped off to the countryside.

So excuse me forgetting, but these things I do

You see I've forgotten, if they're green or they're blue

Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean

Yours are the sweetest eyes, I've ever seen.

I've been following him since Space Oddity. And I've followed him from all those albums that didn't sell, like The Man Who Sold The World and things like that. Above all, apart from all the glamorous rubbish, the music's there. Ziggy Stardust is a classic album.

The great thing about small children is they're portable, so we take them everywhere, but when it comes to 2015, Zachary's going to school, and I want to be there to drop him off and pick him up. I don't want to just be the father who reads them a bedtime story.

I tour as many countries as possible, and I've toured every state in America, plus every province in Canada.

It's like trying to drink whisky from a bottle of wine.

If you're stuck at piano and you're not a lead guitarist or a lead vocalist, you're kind of at a nine-foot plank then and you should do something about it.

How wonderful life is while you're in the world.

I hope you don't mind,

I hope you don't mind,

that I put into words,

how wonderful life is,

now you're in the world.

I love football, but I'm sick of the World Cup. I don't even care about England.

I still want to play music but I don't want to look like Donald Duck while I'm doing it.

I suspected my homosexuality, but I'd never acted out on it because I was afraid of sex. It's awful to be afraid of sex.

Only take as much as you give, in the circle of life.

Welcome to the world of bullshit, my dear. You have arrived.

It's the circle of life, and it moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love, 'till we find our place, on the path unwinding.

It was Scotty Moore's guitar riff in I Want You, I Need You, I Love You when he was doing The Steve Allen Show that got me into rock music.

Oh teacher, I need you like a little child, you got something in you to drive a school boy wild.

Once I'd heard 'Modern Times' by Bob Dylan, it really changed the way I wanted to make records.

Dave and I as a couple seem to be the acceptable face of gayness, and that's great. I've got to use that power to try and do what I can -- or we have -- to try to make the situations in Russia and Poland better.

You know, I've got 1,000 candles in a closet in my home in Atlanta, and I suppose that is excessive. But I'll tell you what: it's the best-smelling closet you've ever been in in your life.

I spent the last week of Ryan's life in Indiana, Indianapolis, with Jeanne and Andrea, Jeanne, his mother, Andrea, his sister, and some other beautiful people who came. And it taught me a lesson.

When I say I don't have to write pop songs anymore, there's no way I'm going to get on the radio at 60 years of age unless I'm doing a duet with Gaga or I was on 'All of the Lights,' which was a Kanye West record that managed to get on the radio.

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East -- you're as good as dead.

Like a candle in the wind, never knowing who to cling to until the rain set it.

I had a little Richard and that black piano, oh that sweet Georgia Peach, and the boy form Tupelo.

Lawdy Mama, those Friday nights when Suzy wore her dresses down tight.

Talk to each other. Never go to bed when you're angry with each other. Lady Antonia Frasier who was married to Harold Pinter said they never went to bed on an argument.

Don't let the sun go down on me.

You should never take more than you give.

Better to build a bridge than a wall.

But actually, my drug addiction thing, I was so stubborn.

When people go to rehab and come out, they go through a difficult period, but I never had that.

For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.

I think performers are all show-offs anyway, especially musicians. Unless you show off, you're not going to get noticed.

I've never been jealous of anybody's success. I've been flummoxed by it because I don't understand it, but I'm not jealous of it.