Bernie Taupin quotes:

My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge.

Elton John's home is laden with trinkets and books relating to Satanism and witchcraft.

Lincolnshire is the Idaho of England. You were either going to drive a tractor for the rest of your life or head for the city to work in a factory.

Read books, discover the blues and don't Tweet.

My Mother set me on the right track, Marty Robbins made me want to write songs, and Jesus Christ did the rest.

We may have limped onto Broadway as the underdogs, but underdogs bite back occasionally.

My favorite thing is coming up with titles. The majority of the songs I've every written I've always thought of the title before I've written the song.

I am a simple vessel with complex overtones, opinionated on occasions but willing to listen. Comfortable with reclusiveness and devoted to privacy and family. Patriotic to a fault and allergic to cruelty, ignorance and bad music.

Early risers catch the world waking and see its true colors.

One reason I quit doing interviews after years and years and years was because I was making things up.

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.

Basically it takes me very little time to write a song. If I find myself taking more than an hour to do it I usually forget it, and try something else. I like to work quickly; I never like to waste any time. I never write half a song and come back to it later at all. It all has to be done at once. I lose interest if it doesn't.

'Captain Fantastic' was the first album in history to enter the (American) album chart at number one. We did it for a second time after that. Now that's not a boast, that's frightening...The process of doing it was unique because I wrote the songs in the order they were recorded, so it was written like a story.

The worst thing about me is that I'll buy albums and put them away on the shelf and forget that I've got them.