Quotes from Elton John

only take as much as you give, in the circle of life.

Either I was genetically predisposed to losing my rag, or I unconsciously learned by example. Whichever it was, it has proved a catastrophic pain in the arse for me and everyone around me for most of my adult life.

It's hard to see how I could have been given a clearer warning that this was a bad idea unless it had started raining brimstone and I'd been visited by a plague of boils.

There's times in my life when music has been an escape, the only thing that worked when everything else seemed broken, but at that moment I had nothing to escape from. I was twenty-four, successful, settled and in love.

It seems insane now that no one even raised an eyebrow, when you consider what I was wearing and doing onstage, but it was a different world then.

There's times in my life when music has been an escape, the only thing that worked when everything else seemed broken, but at that moment I had nothing to escape from.

For years, I lived a life in which nothing really happened.

was eleven years later, my life had changed beyond recognition, and yet here I was, still desperately trying to act normal, while the world around me appeared to have gone completely mad.

The Less I Say The More My Work Gets Done.

And it really taught me something important. Sometimes, you just have to step up to the plate, even if the plate is miles outside your comfort zone. It's like going deep inside yourself, forgetting about whatever emotions you may have and thinking: no, I'm a performer. This is what I do. Get on with it.

But the fact that he never expressed it instilled in me a desire to show him that I'd made the right decision. It made me driven. I thought the more successful I got, the more it proved him wrong, whether he acknowledged it or not. Even today, I still sometimes think that I'm trying to show my father what I'm made of, and he's been dead since 1991.

Or at least, he thought they were specially made, until we played a gig and he saw someone wearing exactly the same kaftan as him. He stopped in the middle of a song and started shouting angrily at him – 'Where did you get that shirt? That's my shirt!' This, I felt, rather ran contrary to the kaftan's associations with peace and love

There was a funny little guy we knew who – in keeping with the flower-power mood of the times – had changed his name to Hans Christian Anderson. The aura of fairy tale otherworldliness conjured by this pseudonym was slightly punctured when he opened his mouth and a thick Lancashire accent came out. Eventually he changed his first name back to Jon and became the lead singer of Yes.

I would shut myself away in my room, just like I had as a kid when my parents were fighting, and try and ignore what was happening.

I worked really hard, maybe too hard, but it felt like there was an unstoppable momentum behind me that carried me on no matter how exhausted I was, that drove me through any kind of setback.

One song, 'All The Nasties', was about me, wondering aloud what would happen if I came out publicly: 'If it came to pass that they should ask – what would I tell them? Would they criticize behind my back? Maybe I should let them'. Not a single person seemed to notice what I was singing about.

straight-talking, hard-working, kind but clearly built with an unbreakable core of steel.

But sometimes, something else happens onstage: from the minute you start playing you just know you can do no wrong. It's as if your hands are moving independently of your brain; you don't even have to concentrate, you just feel as free as a bird, you can do anything you want. Those are the gigs you live for, and Dodger Stadium was like that, on both days.

back then, even talking about rock and roll at the Royal Academy would have been sacrilege, like turning up to church and telling the vicar that you're really interested in worshipping Satan.

I've played pianos, I've jumped on pianos, I've fallen off pianos and I've pushed a piano into the crowd, hit a member of the audience with it and spent the rest of the night frantically apologizing to them.

Sometimes, you just have to step up to the plate, even if the plate is miles outside your comfort zone.

the more removed you become from the person you're naturally supposed to be – the harder you're making your life and the less happy you become.

How boring does your sex life have to be for a blow job to count as the height of unimaginable depravity

When I told him what I'd done, he yelled at me. A man who worked as a driver for the city of Chicago's sanitation department and spent most of his life communicating with his colleagues over the noise of his garbage truck, he could really yell.