Quotes from Van Morrison

You've got to separate the singer and the songs.

Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.

There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.

I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it.

Jackie Wilson said it was Reet-Petite, kind of love you got knock me off my feet.

You can put out an album and it could be totally out of the window as far as what you want to do performance-wise.

I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out.

If you get into introspective blues or something where you're stretching out a bit, large audiences don't respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically.

It's real difficult to pin down directions. I just want to do collaboration-tape stuff.

I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity.

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!

I'm a working man in my prime cleaning windows.

Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea They thought great thoughts about liberty Poets wrote down words that did fit Writers wrote books Thinkers thought about it.

I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

The fog of illusion, the fog of confusion is hanging all over the world.

See the man on the TV with a phony smile. Bring you up, bring you down, he can turn your head around.

Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me.

This Hollywood ain't no good, I would rather be like Robin Hood.