Robert Wyatt's Quotes

I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.

Those nations of artists, finding their own individualism, and kind of standing against the world: to me that's the ultimate nightmare. I want to get lost and diffused in the world.

Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't.

I don't do live things.

I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.

I have never felt in tune with the whole rock industry.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

I think the people who did well, or are happy, in a youth industry, they define themselves out of the business after a decade or so.

I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar.

I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.

I'm not full of malice, but I do dislike Neil Diamond a lot, and I'm sorry that I've done a Neil Diamond song.

I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

On the whole, I tend not to listen to my peers.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

Hunger, revenge, to sleep are petty foes, But only death the jealous eyes can close.

Next to the pleasure of finding a new mistress is that of being rid of an old one.

He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?

Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures.

Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

Bluster, sputter, question, cavil; but be sure your argument be intricate enough to confound the court.

Come, for my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk, and very slovenly.

Go to your business, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.

I have heard people eat most heartily of another man's meat, that is, what they do not pay for.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.

Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and 'Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

The higher the hill, the stronger the wind: so the loftier the life, the stronger the enemy's temptations.

This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.

In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bis.

Englishmen learn Christ's law best in English. Moses heard God's law in his own tongue; so did Christ's apostles.

Private confession... was not ordered by Christ and was not used by the apostles.