Top 40 Tom Petty Quotes

The great thing about the Wilburys was that none of us had to take the heat by ourselves. I was just a member of the band. Nobody felt like he was above anybody else. We had such a good time.

An average show is two hours. And that’s usually right up to the curfew or the union triple time. I always feel like I could have played a little longer or something, but it’s hard for me to pay attention to anything for longer than that.

Go after what you really love and find a way to make that work for you, and then you’ll be a happy person.

I love history, doesn’t matter what era, I’m fascinated.

I love doing my ‘Buried Treasure’ show.

I’m barely prolific and incredibly lazy.

There’s nothing like that feeling of having just written a song that you know is ‘the song,’ and you know it’s really great, and you can’t wait to share it with people; you can’t wait to record it.

As time goes by, you seem to weed out the things that were making your life hard.

I have turned down a lot of money for things that would have made me feel cheesy.

I don’t treat the band like I’m above them or that they’re a hired hand for me. We’ve never worked that way. So I’m a team player. I would be very uncomfortable having to do this alone.

You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don’t take life for granted any more. I’m really glad to be here.

If you’re not getting older, you’re dead.

I like to be an optimist, but I like to be a realist, too.

Most things I worry about never happen anyway.

The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.

It’s very easy to be cynical about the hall of fame. But on the other hand, it’s really a beautiful thing for someone like me. I dedicated my entire life to this music.

Making a record? You’ve got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it’s the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you’re already 90% there. I always tell young people it’s all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.

I’ve never had any idea that what I like would resonate with the audience, and I’m pleasantly surprised when it does.

The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn’t that bad! The writing came natural to me.

I feel sorry for kids these days. They get so much homework. Remember the days when we put a belt around our two books and carried them home? Now they’re dragging a suitcase. They have school all day, then homework from six until eleven. There’s no time left to be creative.

When you get older, your health becomes important to you, things start breaking down, you’ve always got a different ache or pain.

I’m not exactly a guy who makes new friends easily.

What I’ve learned about marriage: You need to have each other’s back; you have to be a kind of team going through life.

Rock isn’t a young music anymore. I don’t think it’s necessarily even a youth-oriented music.

I don’t think it’s a good attitude in your life to feel that you have to be rich to have self-esteem.

When I decided to be a musician I reckoned that that was going to be the way of less profit, less money. I was sort of giving up the idea of making a lot of money. It was what I loved to do. I would have done it anyway. If I’d had to work at Taco Bell I’d have still been out at night trying to play music.

The energy of the crowd is insane. Twenty thousand people. It’s the biggest jolt of adrenaline. It’s very hard to explain. You know the old story about the woman lifting the car off her kid? It’s in that realm. You can actually hurt yourself and not know it.

It’s funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can’t afford the music.

I’ve been more and more into production lately, and I really, really love that. I love recording.

TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It’s downright bad for your health now, and that’s not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health.

I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality.

Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There’s not some trick involved with it. It’s pure and it’s real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.

Do something you really like, and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I’m concerned, that’s success.

I think television’s become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television.

I don’t know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I’m at during a particular moment in time.

When I was 15 or 16 playing in groups, we used to sit in the car and try to write the lyrics down as a song was playing, and we’d assign each person a verse, you know: ‘I’m going to do the first one. You go for the second one.’ And then sometimes you’d wait an hour for it to come on again so you could finish it up.

When I met Elvis, we didn’t really have a conversation. I was introduced by my uncle, and he sort of grunted my way. What stays with me is the whole scene. I had never seen a real mob scene before. I was really young and impressionable. Elvis really did look – he looked sort of not real, as if he were glowing.

I don’t eat fish and chicken and all that. But I will have some eggs. So I’m not technically a vegan. But I eat pretty sensibly, and before a tour, I will usually work out a lot. I’ll get a trainer, or I have a guy I’ve known a long time.

My family wasn’t involved in the college. They were more of just your ‘white trash’ kind of family. And so I have that kind of background, but I always kind of aspired to be something else, and I made a lot of different friends over the years that were passing through.

I think, in America, for a long time you had groups that wanted to be stars more than they wanted to make music.