Quotes from Ozzy Osbourne

There's no present, there's no future, I don't even know about the past.

There are no unachievable goals.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

Somebody said to me this morning, 'To what do you attribute your longevity?' I don't know. I mean, I couldn't have planned my life out better. By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I've lived the last 30 years!

They say military have the so-called 'secret intelligence' - this amount of intelligence must be very secret, since I've never seen any intelligent military person, nor I have seen any sense in the bloody stupid wars.

They teach you how to handle life in England, but they don't teach you a thing about death. There's no book telling you what to do when your mum or dad dies.

I don't remember where we first played 'Black Sabbath' , but I can sure as hell remember the audience's reaction: all the girls ran out of the venue, screaming.

Ozzy, why do you drink so much? What's the point?' The right answer to that question was: because I'm an alcoholic; because I have an addictive personality; because whatever I do, I do it addictively. But I didn't know any of that back then.

My favourite prank in heavy metalwork was to get a penny and spend three or four minutes making it really hot with a blowtorch, and then leave it on Mr Lane's desk, so that he'd see it and pick it up out of curiosity. First you'd hear: 'Waaaaahhhhhh!' Then: 'Osbourne, you little bastard!' Heh-heh-heh. The old hot-penny trick. Priceless, man.

OSBOURNE!' he shouted. 'YOU'RE A DISGRACE TO YOURSELF AND TO THIS SCHOOL. BRING ME A SHOE.' The room went so quiet you could have heard a mouse fart.

I was fifteen when I left school. And what did I get to show for my ten years in the British education system? A piece of paper which said: John Osbourne attended Birchfield Road Secondary Modern. Signed, Mr Oldham (Headmaster) That was f**king it. Not a single qualification. Nothing. I had two career choices: manual labour or manual labour.

Randy [Rhoads] was laid to rest at a place called Mountain View Cemetery, where his grandparents were buried. I made a vow there and then to honour his death every year by sending flowers. Unlike most of my vows, I kept it. But I've never been back to his graveside. I'd like to go there again one day, before I finally join him on the other side.

Mind you, it's all bullshit with wine, isn't it? It's just f**king vinegar with a fizz, no matter what the tasters say.

I think that anyone who eats meat should visit a slaughterhouse at least once in their life, just to see what goes on. It's a bloody, filthy, putrid f**king business.

Still, one of the few good things about being dyslexic is that when I say I don't read reviews, I mean I don't read reviews.

But the thing with us was, we didn't really need anyone to make us world famous – we were already halfway there.

No record mogul had created Black Sabbath , so no record mogul could tell Black Sabbath what to do.

I don't have anything bad to say about the guy they hired to replace me, Ronnie James Dio, who'd previously been with Rainbow . He's a great singer. Then again, he ain't me, and I ain't him. So I just wish they'd called the band Black Sabbath II .

The world doesn't revolve around Tony [Iommi] ,' he said. 'There'll be other guitarists.' He was a good guy, my old man. But this time he was wrong. There were no other guitarists. Not like Tony.

Officially, we didn't have a band leader. Unofficially, we all knew it was Tony [Iommi].

There was a cinema called The Orient outside the community centre where we rehearsed in Six Ways , and whenever it showed a horror film the queue would go all the way down the street and around the corner. 'Isn't it strange how people will pay money to frighten themselves?' I remember Tony [Iommi] saying one day. 'Maybe we should stop doing blues and write scary music instead.'

The funny thing about getting married in America was that we needed to get a blood test before they'd give us a licence. I wouldn't have been surprised if the bloke from the lab had called back and said, 'Mr Osbourne, we appear to have found some blood in your alcohol.'

I remember coming to in white room, with white walls, and people all around me covered in white sheets and thinking, F**k, I'm in the morgue. Then I heard a hissing noise next to my bed. Pssst, pssst. I looked down and there was this kid holding up a pen and a copy of "Bark at the Moon" . 'Will you sign this for me?' he asked. 'F**k off,' I told him. 'I'm dead.'

All rehab can do is tell you what's wrong with you and then suggest ways for you to get better.