I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.

I mean, I was born the day war broke out, but I don't remember all the bombs though they did actually break up Liverpool, you know. I remember when I was a little older, there was big gaps in all the streets where houses used to be. We used to play over them.

And so we went away to play, and we'd come back to Liverpool. And while we were doing this - 'cuz we did it for two years. And then we'd go to Germany, and that's where I met the Beatles.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

We've got the children so we have to deal with each other because we have to deal with children's problems, you know, and our own problems. But some days it's fine, and then some days we just are at each other's throat.

So this is America. They must be out of their minds.

I mean, women are very important to me. I don't know, they just drive me crazy.

That's all drugs and alcohol do, they cut off your emotions in the end.

Everything government touches turns to crap.

I couldn't put my finger on one reason why we broke up. It was time, and we were spreading out. They were spreading out more than I was. I would've stayed with the band.

And in a marriage you can't TRY and be married. You're married or you're not married... as far as I'm concerned.

George was getting alot of independence for himself in those days. He was writing more, and wanted things to go his way - where, when we first started things basically went John and Paul's way. You know, 'cuz they were the writers.

And the White Album is important to me for different reasons. One - I had left the band on the White Album.

The second side of Abbey Road is my favorite.

Well I'm getting happier all the time, which is very nice.

That's when we decided to stop in '66. Everyone thought we toured for years, you know, but we didn't. I joined in '62, and we'd finished touring in '66 to go into the studio where we could hear each other... and create any fantasy that came out of anybody's brain.

We will miss George for his sense of love, his sense of music and his sense of laughter.

And I came back and it was great, 'cuz George had set up all these flowers all over the studio saying welcome home. So then we got it together again. I always felt it was better on the White one for me. We were more like a band, you know.

I'm not sleeping with all the women I appear with.

Gene Autry was the most. It may sound like a joke - Go and have a look in my bedroom, It's covered with Gene Autry posters. He was my first musical influence.

People in Liverpool don't move very far, you know.

Being in The Beatles was a short, incredible period of my life. I had 22 years leading up to it, and it was all over eight years later.

Drumming is my middle name.

First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things... But I didn't play drums to make money.

For me, God is in my life. I don't hide from that... I think the search has been on since the '60s.

I am a big Beatles fan. And, you know, unbeknownst to anyone, I used to be one. But I have no problems of putting titles and lines from other songs in my songs, because they're great lines and great titles.

I don't collect any memorabilia. I wish I'd have kept everything I had. But who knew you had to keep it. Just gave it away. And we lost so much and we didn't look after a lot of it.

I don't talk about myself in the third person, and I laugh at people who do.

I feel the older I get, the more I'm learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it's all about finding yourself.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

I love the modern technology now.

I never studied anything, really. I didn't study the drums. I joined bands and made all the mistakes onstage.

I think the most exciting thing is that you expect people our age to know the music, but actually a lot of kids know the music, and if anything is left, we have left really good music, and that's the important part, not the mop-tops or whatever.

I'd like to end up sort of unforgettable.

I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.

People only look at me as a Beatle, but my friends look at me as a whole person. That's how life works, but it's not bugging me anymore.

Well, I'm getting happier all the time, which is very nice.

When I was thirteen I only wanted to be a drummer.

The drummers always going to be there. Theyre the floor of the whole deal and everyone can stand up on you.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that.

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

If I were assigned poems I suppose I'd write more of them but it is entirely voluntary and for the most part ignored in the market sense of the word so the language to me is most intimate, most important, most sublime and most satisfying when it gets done.

I like poems that are complex.

'A collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.