John Lydon

“There's no harm in me. Really, I'm just a big kid.”

“I love America. I love Americans.”

“I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel.”

“I was a very sickly boy when I was young; nearly died when I was 7. I had a life-threatening attack of meningitis, and that put me in a coma for a few months. It took me four years to get my memory back.”

“Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.”

“When I write, my brain moves faster than my hands so I'm always trying to picture things.”

“You need the past as a guideline. The history of music is a good basis, but to escape that stuff, that tortuous rulebook, you have to learn it first. It's kind of like religion - once you've written the Bible, that's it, move on.”

“The record companies fell apart - quite deservedly. Their corrupting, all-binding contract nonsense had to stop.”

“I have one major problem with the internet: It's full of liars. There doesn't seem to be any way to answer to people lying about you.”

“You have moments of grief in life, and if you can put pen to paper and capture that, that's something wonderful. I can revisit actual songs about past deaths, and I know that emotion is as true now as it was then.”

“Oscar Wilde turned the world upside down and was able to laugh at it, and hopefully by the time I'm 120 and worn out, that's what I will achieve. I love being alive so much.”

“I was brought up and raised in Britain as a Labour man, and that quickly changed. And I find there are more working-class people in the Conservative Party than the Labour party.”

“My entire life, socially, was all around the Maggie era. That was the great challenge as a Sex Pistol was how to deal with Margaret Thatcher. I think we did rather good.”

“When you grew up like me and my four brothers, you end up feeling somewhat inadequate, like somehow you don't count.”

“I like America's diversity and its landscapes.”

“When you grew up like me and my four brothers, you end up feeling somewhat inadequate, like somehow you don't count. I was very ill as a child and in and out of hospital. That sort of alienates you, and in my songs I put that to good use.”

“As a young concert-going person, I was never enamoured with celebrities who would walk out to feature in certain songs and then walk off.”

“There are some Rolling Stones songs that are just stunners.”

“I don't think there's any such thing as rock n' roll anymore - it's an amalgamation of business interests.”

“Don't accept the old order. Get rid of it.”