Phil Collins quotes:

Everything has added up to a load that I'm getting tired of carrying. It's gotten so complicated. It's the three failed marriages, and having kids that grew up without me, and it's the personal criticism, of being Mr. Nice Guy, or of divorcing my wife by fax, all that stuff, the journalism, some of which I find insulting.

There were 'big stars' at the Alamo! Bowie, Crockett! It is a huge political event because it, and the events at Goliad and San Jacinto, changed the look of a map of America. America would be a very different place if Texas had remained Mexican.

Take a look at me now, cause there's just an empty space. And you coming back to me is against all odds and that's what I've got to face.

The story of the Alamo has touched many more people than one would think. So, I would like to pay my respects to those men on both sides of the walls in those months of February and March 1836.

I can't play anywhere near like I used to, and I was a hot drummer. It doesn't bother me, because frankly, if you get to that point where you can't hold a drumstick properly, there are many other things in life which are far more important, like cutting a loaf of bread or a piece of cheese.

I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn't seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history.

As soon as you start making a record, things start getting lined up: the promotion, possibly even a tour.

I never stopped thinking about the Alamo from that day to this. I'm a huge collector of memorabilia. I've got Davy Crockett's bullet pouch. I've got Colonel Travis's belt.

When I go on Japanese Airlines, I really love it because I like Japanese food.

In 1977 we played America and Europe three times, and Japan - my marriage suffered as a result. My then wife took the kids to Canada to be near her parents.

Many of the articles printed over the last few months have ended up painting a picture of me that is more than a little distorted.

The world is in your hands, now use it.

I remember flying with Air India to New York quite a few years ago now and I love Indian food, so the fact that I had a curry on board was fantastic.

Catering on planes, like on British Rail, is a standing joke, but I don't really have a problem with it. I don't quite know what people expect.

I am stopping so I can be a full-time father to my two young sons on a daily basis.

I can't remember much about the early flights, except that it was ages before we got into First Class.

I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you've got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you're in the charts.

I've bought pretty much every book ever written about the Alamo, and I talk to my friends that I've made over the past 15, 20 years. It's just a constant learning and fascinating thing for me.

Urban Renewal' was sweet because I've been - unfairly, I would say - plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens.

When I was five or six, I started dressing up like Davy Crockett.

I don't really belong to that world and I don't think anyone's going to miss me. I'm much happier just to write myself out of the script entirely.

I don't really listen to music.

And I would like to marry and have more children. I would like to try and do it right.

It's always been easy with Mark, he's a rock fan and we speak the same language. He's a big Beatles fan too. We worked a lot via CLI calls, though only meeting up once every couple of months.

I never said I was at the Alamo. Someone else said I was at the Alamo. Now I'm a nutter. I don't think that's fair.

The difference between the American version of 'Live Aid' and the British one - in England, if you wanted a cup of tea, you made it yourself. If you wanted a sandwich, you bought it. In typical American style, at the American concert, there were laminated tour passes and champagne and caviar.

I usually hang around the room listening to a bit of last night's show. If there's one available, I go to the steam room every day for my voice. I spend half an hour there and then I eat, because I can't eat later than four o'clock. Then I go for a soundcheck. That's my day.

Like last night I had a sequence with a gun and, to be honest, for me to be threatening with a gun and not be comical is quite hard.

Often there's a BA crew, because half the time we stay at the same hotels, especially in Australia. I can remember spending quite a lot of time with crews around the pool there. They always make themselves known to us.

You know, I've released some great records and I've released some dogs. But frankly, the fun is in creating the thing.

It's actually come as quite a shock to learn just how many people don't like me.

I don't want to preach, but I really think the rudiments are very important to developing your drumming skills. Many of the patterns I've recorded came from things like paradiddles, flam paradiddles, flam triplets... They might be boring to sit down and practice, but not when you apply them to the drums.

Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project - like now, we're just finishing off an album - and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.

When destiny calls you, you've got to be strong. I may not be with you, but you've got to move on.

If it's the beginning of something - like an album, I'm working on the lyrics and I take a walkman and headset.

I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.

I'll have the music, and then I'll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.

Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption.

Would you respect me if I didn't have this gun? Cause without it, I don't get it, and that's why I carry one.

The day Tarzan opened in London, I sat in a hotel room and discussed the project in detail.

In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.

We stayed in some pretty shabby places in Europe.

My only saving grace is that I actually collect things that nobody else is interested in.

I've got one of four known Davy Crocket rifles. It's fantastic just to know it's one of the rifles that he actually used. His cousin had it.

God is a spa-bath of water and we are all individual bubbles

To see a lot of the smaller labels disappear or get gobbled up by the bigger labels, that's a shame. It was a bit of a shock at first to see the demise of the record stores.

Everyones a hypercrit and if you don't agree you're a liar as well

I don't own an ABBA album, and I never had the urge to go and buy one. If you're just talking about well crafted pop songs, they were fantastic.

Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock.

Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.

There's no magic for getting into the groove... just banging away at it. Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the music.

I prefer black music in general.

I'm not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I'm a drummer that sings a bit.

In Genesis we saw ourselves as song-writers. After Peter Gabriel left I was the first to say: 'It's OK - we can just do instrumentals.'

I joined Genesis when I was 19. I've earned the right to actually do nothing. I don't want to be a shadow of what I was, so I've kind of just quite willingly stood back.

I have never been a Conservative, or at least not since being a young teenager. My father voted Conservative, and even his doing that was a hangover from the '50s and '60s, which may have been an influence on me.

All I set out to do was to earn a living playing drums, you know? And as luck would have it, I've surpassed that.

And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.

As a composer I approached the drums differently than a non-composing drummer. I embraced drum machines.

As a writer, author, creator of something the fact that people are still interested, is fantastic.

As I've got older, I've got more understanding of relationships and how they work - but every single relationship has different dynamics, so you can't paint everyone with the same colour.

As I've gotten older and learned more, I realise that Hollywood has not told the truth.

Before you write - remember that every speech has something of 'you' in the writing. Don't take that away when you write. Be yourself. Be comfortable in your own skin.

Believe it or not, Japanese is actually easier than some European languages!

Considering yourself selflessly selfish is a principle of all great thinkers

Deep inside us we're not that different at all.

Drummers get bored. You tell them to play something simple, and it gets more complicated as they do it. If they're not a composer, if they don't have any kind of investment in the music, they'll just add a bit there and another bit there, and you think no! Don't do that. So you end up using a drum machine.

Find a way to my heart, and I will always be with you.

Genesis fans are a religious group!

I can't consider myself a drummer any more.

I didn't become a commercially successful artist by design, and actually I think that commercially successful just means, if you analyse it, that a lot of people like you. It's become a dirty word, and I don't necessarily think it needs to be.

I do miss things about Britain. I think there was a misconception, there definitely was, that I left because of bad press, and being pilloried. I left Britain because I fell in love with someone who lived in Switzerland - that was the main thing.

I feel terrible for women that have had Phil Collins tattoos. Their poor husbands have to deal with.

I have some rhythms on my computers, that are actually called "trance", they go from 1-30 or 40. They're grooves that come on the synth. If I could somehow use them, I would.

I just don't think of myself as a star. This is what I do for a living; I'm fortunate that I make ends meet.

I just figured if I'm going to call myself a songwriter throughout my life, then writing for most genres of music is something I should at least attempt.

I know it shouldn't make a difference, but crossing the dateline, we weren't sure what day it was - it was very strange. Now, I seem to cope with it better.

I suppose Phil Collins offers something for everybody, and in hipdom that's not cool. But in the real world, there's no shame in that at all.

I suppose you can't take kids into consideration all the time, but I just wish there could be a bit of flexibility.

I think I was the best drummer!

I used to go to my local pub and it was like a sanctuary, nobody dared ask for an autograph. You went in there for a ploughman's and a pint, and you went home and watched TV. Believe me, there's more to watch on British TV than American, except for CNN right now. But yeah, I miss it.

I very rarely listen to the in-flight stuff.

I was talking to Australian press earlier, and they said: we never stopped playing you. I tended to forget about that. It brings a smile to your face that there is this continuing thing, that people like what you do.

I wish I could just make you turn around, turn around and see me cry There's so much I need to say to you, so many reasons why You're the only one who really knew me at all So take a look at me now, 'cos there's just an empty space And there's nothing left here to remind me, just the memory of your face Take a look at me now, 'cos there's just an empty space And you coming back to me is against all odds and that's what I've got to face

I'd love to work with Disney again.

If Miles Davis hadn't died it would have been interesting to do an album with him, but there wasn't much else that would have got me into the studio... although Herbie Hancock has just been in touch about doing something and that would be an interesting combination.

I'm fascinated by what people will do to each other. Actually, I'm sort of interested in the gory details of life.

I'm just trying to do things that are interesting for me.

I'm much happier just to write myself out of the script entirely...

I'm not sure at all about the current prog rock scene.

I'm not trying necessarily to become a movie star; that wouldn't be bad but that's not the aim. I'm just trying to do interesting things and go into areas where I've not been before.

I'm sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn't mean it to happen like that. It's hardly surprising that people grew to hate me.

I'm usually going to make a record, finish a record, start a record or start a tour or between tours.

In 1977 we played America and Europe three times, and Japan - my marriage suffered as a result. My then wife took the kids to Canada to be near her parents

It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.

I've been a long-distance father.

I've spent the last year and a half going through a very public separation, hiding in hotel lobbies.

No seriously... when there's families, you tend to go back to your room after the gig rather than go for a drink with the other guys. But there's always someone who's got something going, like the tour manager.

Non-physicality may soon come to dominate our reality. Thanx Quatum Mechanics!

Of course you can't please everyone all the time. It's just something that I've got to get over, and I'm better at it now.

On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.

Perception determines insanity...

Prog rock, with a little good taste, is ok. I tried to bring some of it into this century, I guess.

Put your faith in what you most believe in.

Tattoos don't impress me. For me it's just another awkward part of fame. It's extraordinary - tattoos in basketball and soccer, it's quite extraordinary.

That's going to be on my headstone: 'He came. He wrote 'In the Air Tonight.' He... died.'

That's the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it'll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.

The answer is inside your head; it's easy to find if you take it logically.

The binding of reason and intuition is the fundamental crisis of the era we call humanity. Transcedence of duality is the key.

The stereotypical rock-star-trashing-a-hotel-room thing? Those days had passed by the time I was in a band big enough to do it.

The whole having records and selling records and being on TV, that was something that I didn't ever think would be for me. I thought that would be for other people. All I wanted to do was make a living playing the drums.

There's something perverse isn't there, if you're playing in front of 100,000 people and there's 2000 people down the front who don't like, you think: what is it that they don't like?

They're the only ones brave enough to give me these opportunities [on being offered a soundtrack!]

Things happen, but things happen and you follow... your heart is too dramatic, but you follow.

Think twice; it's just another day for you and me in paradise.

This stupid sensitivity! But then women like sensitivity.

To be honest, producing records interests me less at the moment and I really don't want to get involved in album projects that are going to take up a lot of time

To me, groups of musicians playing together, not fighting each other, but playing a groove together is one of the most exciting things to listen to.

'Urban Renewal' was sweet because I've been - unfairly, I would say - plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens.

Wait for it, wait for it! Anticipation is half the fun, So I've been told...