Bruce Dickinson quotes:

When you cut human beings down to size, we're really quite simple creatures; food, shelter, warmth, light, heat and you build it up from there really until you finally go Gucci shoes or whatever it is or whatever your consumer desires are. All those desires are ultimately, they're about gratification.

Best two rock voices I've heard in a last few years both have been from grunge bands: it's Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.

A few of these interviews have gone slightly awry, because every now and again there has been the odd conflict of interest between interviews because of the Iron Maiden record, and I am a bit long-winded.

A guy called Arthur Brown... was a big influence of mine... and also Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull.

I find that fencing and training give me more stamina and help me deal with the craziness of being on the road so much.

The mystical poetry of William Blake's artwork also forms the basis for the album cover.

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

Engineering stimulates the mind. Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things. When the schools can offer that, you'll have an engineer for life.

Well, it's a nice quiet time for Iron Maiden, and I'll be releasing a new solo album next year, so this is a really good time for the managing out my solo career, which is quite well.

I am taking a break, but not a huge break because the Maiden record is actually happening right now, and I am recording it as we speak, well not right as we speak, but close.

If heavy metal bands ruled the world, we'd be a lot better off.

I'm trying to be as green as I can. As an airline pilot, I have a carbon footprint that's a size 10, so it's pretty hard.

In my teenage years I was put off the idea of a career in flying, because I'd convinced myself that you had to be a boffin with degrees in maths and physics, which were my weakest subjects.

I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it's evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams, and I work in a way that has more control.

Life on the road can get a little one-dimensional. I didn't want to reach 40 and have to say all I'd done was look out the window of a tour bus and get drunk.

Teachers need to be more inspirational. But it's also up to engineering to make itself more interesting.

My son is in a band, and he's a singer, and his vocals... they're screaming-growling stuff... and he's got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I'm, like, 'Hats off to you.'

Business is just about enabling human beings, nothing more, nothing less. Businesses need to recognize this fundamental fact.

If it all just happens like this for the rest of my life, it's going to be one endless Groundhog Day. I determined that I was not prepared to submit to this regime, so I thought I had to do something about it.

Apart from death and taxes, the one thing that's certain in this life is that I'll never be a fashion icon.

Life is too short to do the things you don't love doing.

If your only arbiter of anything is money, really you should... go and rob banks.

Engineering stimulates the mind.

I don't have interns. I don't have a manager. I don't have assistants. I don't have a secretary. I can't figure out Outlook Express. I'm the worst person in the world answering e-mails, and my phone is probably the oldest, most battered phone you can find. So I just talk to people.

My aim as a frontman is always to try and shrink the venue, if you can, to turn that football stadium into the world's smallest club. At least you have to try.

I shall refract myself, yes, I shall no longer be known as the prism.

(On performing in Costa Rica for the first time) It was like finding some weird tribe in the middle of the jungle and, you know, they all come out and go: "Fear of the Dark. Favorite Album." What?!?

There are a lot of bands using self-abuse as a marketing gimmick.

I'm trying to be as green as I can. As an airline pilot, I have a carbon footprint that's a size 10, so it's pretty hard."

Don't ask me to put up a shelf, but I love engineering.

In the days when Glastonbury was an alternative festival, it was quite interesting. Now it is the most bourgeois thing on the planet ... we'll leave the middle classes to do Glastonbury and the rest of the great unwashed will decamp to Knebworth and drink a lot of beer and have fun.

I guess that the salary that they get when they are working with me is, like, it beats working at McDonalds, so it has got some things going for it.

My son is in a band, and he's a singer, and his vocals they're screaming-growling stuff and he's got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I'm, like, 'Hats off to you.'

Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.

Iron Maiden is an institution, and I'm delighted that I'm involved in it, but there was a time that I wasn't delighted so I quit.

We're better than Metallica. We're better musicians, better players. Put it this way, they can try to walk onstage after an Iron Maiden show if they want.

When I was in employment as a regular line pilot, I used to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden. I got lucky - they let me off

I guess it was the first time I really thought about leaving. I don't just mean Iron Maiden, I mean quitting music altogether. I just thought, 'Nothing is worth feeling like this for.' I began to feel like I was a piece of machinery, like I was part of the lighting rig.

When I write with Maiden, then I write only with the guys in Maiden, we don't do songs from outside people.

I think the best way to find out about something is to try to do it to the max. A lot of people take up a hobby or sport and then find an excuse not to carry on with it. Once I start something, I won't stop until I'm as good at it as I'll ever be.

I've been to the Reading festival twice before-as a punter, though I stayed backstage in the hospitality tent!

King in Crimson is actually an alchemical term. King Crimson is a metaphor for Devil or Satan, but at the same time it's also a metaphor for one of the statures in the purification of man and the purification of mankind soul towards union with God and with Infinite, which is the philosophical aim of alchemists.

Some of Eminem's rap songs kind of have the teenage love songs like the fifties love songs. It's kind of like domestic drama set to music. He is really good storyteller.

Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers.

I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.

If you really want to annoy me, ask me when I'm going to retire from rock n' roll.

I've had a bit of experience at lots and lots of different arenas as it were, some of them completely creative, some of them quite technical. The interesting thing is, is that I found that the technical arenas actually are also very creative or can be very creative.

The celebrity thing, I mean, Lindsay Lohan - what's she for? I look at that and throw my hands up in despair.

My dad always told me, 'I don't care what you do. Just aim to be the best at it. Even if it's the world's best window cleaner.'

I do like Marylin Manson, actually. I think, he's very talented and he did make some great music.

I'm very good at daydreaming. Ask any of my schoolteachers.

Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things.

With the Internet, bands can come and go every five minutes and the music looks disposable.

One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.

South Wales is a hub of aviation.

Major labels blow all their money massively and blame it on the band.

Well, yeah, sometimes I get a little too creative.

There are basically two categories of music: Metal and bullshit.

Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change

Fly, on your way, like an eagle / Fly as high as the Sun.

You can sail in the desert with a ship of fools. You can smuggle in Moses and his book of rules. But you can't take a mother and give her back her son. What kind of freedom is bought with a gun? People like to build their prison walls when they're afraid to look inside... a thousand points of light are the muzzle flashes in the night. And the freedoms you profess to hold won't bring the dead back from the cold.

Anybody auditions for X-Factor it's because they want to be famous, not because they are artists.

The more guitars we have onstage the better, as I'm concerned.

In my naïvety, I thought people who were in rock 'n' roll bands were great artists, and it was a huge shock to the system to realise that they weren't, that they didn't even aspire to be, really. Some of them did, maybe, but some of them, like Samson, were very frightened of the idea.

I was an accident - my mum was only 16 when she had me.

Tyranny of freedom is do what you like. There's a world gone crazy, cause it can't say no.

I'm not going to do any more solo touring.

The joke in aviation is, 'If you want to make a million, you'd better start with £10m.'