[about his legendary partying with other celebrities] I promise you folks, we don't raise hell. But we do have a good time.

[About his and John Lennon's being ejected from the Troubadour Club in Hollywood) That incident ruined my reputation for 10 years. Get one Beatle drunk and look what happens!

[Describing his London apartment, where he lived in the early 1970s] It was just a typical London flat, but it was in a great neighborhood. It was across from the Playboy Club, diagonally. From one balcony you could read the time from Big Ben, and from the other balcony you could watch the bunnies go up and down.

I do believe that most men live lives of quiet desperation. For despair, optimism is the only practical solution. Hope is practical. Because eliminate that and it's pretty scary. Hope at least gives you the option of living.

I get nervous when they start shooting piano players.

[How The Point (1971) was conceived] I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it.'