Quotes from John Lydon

I showed what I can do with butter, right? Eighty-five percent increase in sales. I'm very proud of them Country Life ads. They were funny and clever and classy like the Toblerone ads I grew up with.

Words cannot express quite a lot of feelings, whereas a noise or tone or drone or sound, an accordion falling down a staircase, can somehow capture an emotion much better.

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.

I have one major problem with the Internet: It's full of liars.

Rules are important, but they're temporary and they're always supposed to be changed.

If my leg falls off, I'll get a prosthetic. There'd be no deep sadness about. I'd just get on with it! It's called life, and I love life. You have to be positive, and you have to crack on no matter what.

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.

Over the years, during television interviews, whenever the host or the reviewer or whoever gets cynical and nasty with me, I will behave accordingly. I will defend myself.

I've never told anyone this. But I suffer from terrible stage fright. True. You can't tell though, can you? Unbelievable, the panic. I nearly die of fear before I go on stage. Something wicked. I can't eat a thing the day before a gig. It'd make me vomit.

I nearly die of fear before I go on stage. Something wicked. I can't eat a thing the day before a gig.

I love Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart because they're bringing irony back into American humor, which is a delicious treat. The entire Colbert persona of being extreme right-wing when he's not at all is highly amusing. He does it so well, but sometimes a little too well. My wife is convinced he's completely that way.

If I'm left to my own devices, I will be tempted to make the most unlistenable music possible.

No matter what you experience in life, it incorporates political tendencies, and in so many ways.

I never thought of Green Day as a punk band. Just bubblegum, really.

I'm no one's lap dog, you can't put me on a leash.

I cannot comprehend fundamentalism. It's fundamentally wrong.

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.

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.

Art should be life. It's an imitation of life. It should have some humanity in it.

If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character.

It's quite clear to me I'm not a sexist and I'm not a misogynist.

All the things that you would have thought would have made me a professional A1 criminal... wrong. I decided that was too lazy and easy, and because of the way British society is, quite frankly you were denied an education, so I got one of my own.

If you give me the chance, I'll destroy America for you.

There's nothing glorious in dying. Anyone can do it.