What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.

I've always embraced failure as a noble pursuit. It allows you to be anti whatever anyone wants you to be, and to break all the rules.

Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've just got to be sure that it's a magnificent failure and that, by creating a magnificent failure, you plant the seed.

There are two rules I've always tried to live by: turn left, if you're supposed to turn right; go through any door that you're not supposed to enter. It's the only way to fight your way through to any kind of authentic feeling in a world beset by fakery.

Art school had taught me it was far better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.

Sid Vicious began the age of participation in which everyone could be the artist. Sid proved that you don't have to play well to be the star. You can play badly, or not even at all. I endorsed that attitude. If you can't write songs, no problem - simply steal one and change it to your taste.