Roger Waters Quotations

I found that the loudest fans in the world are in Istanbul.

I'm in competition with myself and I'm losing.

Not the torturer will scare me, nor the body's final fall, nor the barrels of death's rifles, nor the shadows on the wall, nor the night when to the ground the last dim star of pain, is hurled but the blind indifference of a merciless, unfeeling world.

The United States has held out against taking part in any of the world consensus that there should be a court of human rights or that there should be an international court of criminal justice.

I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs.

I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs.

I confess I've never felt like a passenger.

I would not rule out going to Israel because I disapprove of the foreign policy any more than I would refuse to play in the UK because I disapprove of Tony Blair's foreign policy.

Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.

We were contracted to make a soundtrack album but there really wasn't enough new material in the movie to make a new record that I thought was interesting.

It's a miracle was the last track recorded for the album, we based it on the rhythm from the middle of 'Late Home Tonight, where there's Graham Broad playing lots and lots of drums with me shouting in the background, pretending to be a mad Arab leader.

For an artist to go and play in a country that occupies other people's land and oppresses them, the way Israel does, is plain wrong. They should say no.

I could have been an architect, but I don't think I'd have been very happy. Nearly all modern architecture is a silly game as far as I can see.

When I first got a guitar, it was a Spanish, classical thing.

There are elements that were pure invention on my part.

But when push came to shove, ... I think it stuck in the Gallic craw that a) I was English and b) I had been in a pop group though the French are better at allowing movement between disciplines. Then Nadine died, and we put the project on the shelf. I picked it up again in '95.

He was in custody when our officers got there, ... There's no need for an investigation. We didn't lay a hand on him.

I think Syd was destined to unhinge with or without acid, frankly, but there is no question that certainly acid and probably hash as well, have an exacerbating effect on that collection of symptoms that we call schizophrenia. You couldn't find anything more likely to accelerate or exacerbate those symptoms.

Who is the strongest, who is the best, who holds the aces, the East or the West. This is the crap our children are learning.

The only realistic option is to divide the cake differently. After Live8 and the G8 summit, at least people are beginning to make noises about changing the deep imbalance in the world, ... I come back to the UK quite often. I didn't leave as a protest against the hunting ban; I was following a child in the wake of a divorce.

Now I can write in some laughs, notable by their absence in the movie.

Although it's rooted in the history of the revolution, its philosophical slant is, I suppose, contemporary as well, ... It's more than just a history of the French Revolution, it's a piece about the human potential for change.

It is with the utmost respect to Pink Floyd that we took the challenge.

It's not just a piece about the French Revolution, it's about revolution in a much broader sense, and it's about the capacity that human beings have for personal change. The piece is an exultation and an encouragement to those of us who believe the human race can discover its humanity and its capacity for empathy to the point where it may be possible for us at some point to guarantee the basic human rights of the individual (around the world).

Eventually, though, ... Sony urged me to use English instead of French, so I wrote an English version of Etienne and Nadine's work, and then I felt compelled to expand on their original text. Their work was really a series of gorgeous tableaux, and I added more personal narrative and history for some of the characters.

Each small candle lights a corner of the darkWhen the wheel of pain stops turning And the branding iron stops burningWhen the children can be children When the desperados weaken When the tide rolls into greet themAnd the natural law of science Greets the humble and the mighty And a billion candles burning Lights the dark side of every human mind

It's great to be asked to help Bob raise public awareness about third world debt and poverty.

In 1987 or '88, Etienne and Nadine came with a manuscript, ... It was all handwritten, with illustrations by Nadine. They asked if I would set it to music.

If there's another charity, or a reason to bring us together, I could see it happening. Otherwise, no. And we've had lots of offers. But we're just not going to do the $250 million tour.

be given the opportunity to put the band back together, even if it's only for a few numbers.

Would you like to watch TV or get between the sheets and contemplate this violent freeway, would you like something to eat would you like to learn to fly would ya, would you like to see me try

When we grew up and went to school There were certain teachers who would Hurt the children anyway they could By pouring their derision Upon anything we did And exposing every weakness However carefully hidden by the kids

Envy is the bond between the hopeful and the damned

When you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else.

I don't feel as if I'm in competition with myself; not at all.

Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today. But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away.

There are so many people out there who think they are fans of Pink Floyd - and certainly the work I did in Pink Floyd - who are still furious that I left.

In my rear view mirror the sun is going down sinking behind bridges in the road and I think of all the good things that we have left undone and I suffer premonitions confirm suspicions of the holocaust to come.

You can draw a line between what I'm interested in and what I'm not interested in. On one side you can name Dylan and Lennon, who observe the world and have feelings, and write songs directly from those feelings. On the vapid side you have pop groups who need material and write songs to fill the hole, rather than getting somebody else.

Did you see the frightened ones, Did you hear the falling bombs, Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter in the promise of a brave new world unfurlled beaneath the clear blue skies. Good bye blue skies.

We, the great American nation, decided that we've got 138 military bases around the world and we've now figured out that we can buy these drones from the Israelis, and we've decided that the way to proceed is to use this new technology to go and kill anybody that we don't like or who disagrees with us or who we might perceive as making an existential threat.

I am one of the best five writers to come out of English music since the war.

Everybody's got somewhere they call home.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

There is a magic in some books That sucks a man into connections With the spirits hard to touch That join him to his kind.

I have no problem with any question.

You take the risk of being rejected.

This is how you control your domestic population - by making people afraid and by identifying an enemy.

By the cold and religious we were taken in hand - shown how to feel good; and told to feel bad.

We're not ignored by The Guinness Book Of Records, but we've been largely ignored by the media during our lifetime. If you read any article, no mention is ever made of Pink Floyd. We're never included in the same sentences as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I wrote 'The Wall' as an attack on stadium rock - and there's Pink Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They spoiled my creations.

I don't really listen to Radiohead. I listened to the albums and they just didn't move me in the way, say, John Prine does. His is just extraordinarily eloquent music.

Doctor Doctor what is wrong with me This supermarket life is getting long What is the heart life of a colour TV What is the shelf life of a teenage queen

What it comes down to for me is this: Will the technologies of communication in our culture, serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?

My mother told me I said to her, at age three, 'I'm going to go to Italy and get my father in a tractor.' 'You've never seen quite so fierce a little boy as you were,' she told me. She tried to explain that I couldn't get my father in a tractor. Apparently I looked at her and narrowed my eyes and said 'In that case, I'm going in a double-decker bus,' and stomped off. Which is kind of funny, but it's very sad, as well.

And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

And who knows which is which and who is who

In the finished article, the only thing that is important is whether it moves you or not. There is nothing else that is important at all.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall

For us the most important thing is to be visual, and for the cats watching us to have fun. This is all we want. We get very upset if people get bored when we're only half way through smashing the second set.

Wish You Were Here So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, Blue skys from pain. Can you tell a green field From a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? And did they get you to trade Your heros for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange A walk on part in the war For a lead role in a cage? How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here.

Each small candle lights a corner of the dark.

We don't need no thought control.

Life is long. But it goes fast.

That one record changed everything for me. After Sgt. Pepper, it's the most influential record in the history of rock and roll. It affected Pink Floyd deeply, deeply, deeply. Philosophically, other albums may have been more important, like Lennon's first solo album. But sonically, the way the record's constructed, I think Music from Big Pink is fundamental to everything that happened after it.

I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien culture seeing the death of this planet - coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around; finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why our end came before its time and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death..

Can't you see it all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents, pounds shillings and pence, can't you see it all; makes perfect sense

But that's not to say that the potential for the sun to shine doesn't exist. You know? Walk down the path towards the light, rather than walk into the darkness.

All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.

I feel I have the potential to reach an audience beyond anything I can imagine.

You run and you run to catch up to the sun but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again.

You take the risk of being rejected. If you have pretentions to be an artist of any kind, you have to take the risk of people rejecting you and thinking you're an arsehole.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

All that you touch All that you see All that you taste All you feel. All that you love All that you hate All you distrust All you save. All that you give All that you deal All that you buy, beg, borrow or steal. All you create All you destroy All that you do All that you say. All that you eat And everyone you meet All that you slight And everyone you fight. All that is now All that is gone All that's to come and everything under the sun is in tune but the sun is eclipsed by the moon. "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark.

Long you live and high you fly. And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry. And all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.

I was faced with a choice: to deny my addiction and embrace that 'comfortably numb' but 'magicless' existence, or accept the burden of insight, take the road less travelled, and embark on the often painful journey to discover who I was and where I fit.

...why is an artist an artist? Artists simply do feel and see things in a different way to other people. In a way it's a blessing, but it can also be a terrible curse. There's a great deal of satisfaction to be earned from it but often it's also a terrible burden.

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark.

ashes or diamonds foe or friend we're all equal in the end