"He's going to cheer it up a bit, it's gonna be like "The Sound of Music" but with bricks in it."
-Nick Mason commenting on Roger Waters' plans for a reloaded 2009 version of "The Wall".

Where would Rock and Roll be without feedback??
- Dave Gilmour - Live at Pompeii (video) The Dark Side of the Moon Sessions - 1972


I like our music to feel three-dimensional. It's about trying to invoke emotions in people, I suppose. You feel larger than life in some sort of way. Let's face it none of us in Pink Floyd are technically brilliant musicians, with great chops who can change rhythms, fifteen or sixteen bars here, there and everywhere. And we're not terribly good at complicated chord structures. A lot of it is just very simple stuff dressed up. We stopped trying to make overtly 'spacey' music and trip people out in that way in the 60's. But that image hangs on and we can't seem to get shot of it.
- Dave Gilmour - Musician - December 1982


My technique is laughable at times. I have developed a style of my own, I suppose, which creeps around [...] I don't have to have too much technique for it. I've developed the parts of my technique that are useful to me. I'll never be a very fast guitar player. I don't really know what to say about my style. There's always a melodic intent in there.
- Dave Gilmour - Sounds 'Guitar Heroes' magazine - May 1983


Roger doesn't have the right at present to tell me what to do with my life, although he believes that he does. And he'll not ruin my career, although lately he's been trying to.
- Dave Gilmour - Penthouse - September 1988 - regarding Roger Waters


He had developed his own limited, or very simple style. He was never very keen on improving himself as a bass player and half the time I would play bass on the records because I would tend to do it quicker. Right back to those early records; I mean, at least half the bass on all recorded output is me anyway. [...] Rog used to come in and say - 'Thank you very much' - to me once in a while for winning him bass-playing polls.
- Dave Gilmour - Rock Compact Disc magazine - September 1992 - regarding Roger Waters


I've been in The Who, I've been in The Beatles and I've been in Pink Floyd! Top that!
- Dave Gilmour - Record Collector magazine - May 2003


Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing.... you just go out and have a play over it and see what comes and it's usually �'mostly�' the first take that's the best one and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter.
- Dave Gilmour - from Time - in 'Classic Albums: Pink Floyd �'The Dark Side of the Moon' - on the guitar solo


It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations.
- Dave Gilmour - regarding Pink Floyd reunion concert to protest G8 policies - June 2005


The band? It's over. Reunited because of the good cause (Live 8) to get over the bad relationship and not to have regrets.
- Dave Gilmour - ruling out the possibility of a reunion of the band talking to Italian newspaper - La Repubblica - Feb 2006


There is no purpose. We do whatever we do. You either blow your brains out or get on with something.
- Roger Waters - when asked what his artistic purpose was - June 1987


What it comes down to for me is: Will the technologies of communication and culture...... and especially popular music, which is a vast and beloved enterprise...... help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?
- Roger Waters - Penthouse Magazine - September 1988


I think that happiness resides somewhere between the extremes of personal, religious, and political. I think happiness resides where we understand someone else's point of view and needs. Happiness resides where we are not lost in the solitary dream.
- Roger Waters - November 2005


For us the most important thing is to be visual and for the cats watching us to have fun. This is all we want. We get very upset if people get bored when we're only half way through smashing the second set. Then all of a sudden they hear Arnold Layne and they flip all over again.
- Roger Waters - Rave UK Magazine - June 1967


Earlier this year we went skiing and I was in a shop, paying a bill and there was a woman standing there whom I knew slightly. I was waiting for my bill and she was buying something, a tea strainer. Quite suddenly she said to me 'Where was you Father killed?' I was very surprised and blurted out 'Oh Anzio'. Now this is a woman of about my age, so she's 40ish. She said 'My Father was killed in the war.' Apparently somebody lent her a copy of 'The Final Cut' and she had listened to the whole thing and she had found it very moving. In fact she said it had moved her to tears. She told me this, standing in the shop, with some effort I suspect and I remember thinking 'That's enough really. It doesn't matter if the Americans don't buy it.
- Roger Waters in a Karl Dallas interview - 1984


I have nothing against Dave Gilmour furthering his own goals. It's just the idea of Dave's solo career masquerading as Pink Floyd that offends me!
- Roger Waters - Penthouse Magazine - September 1988


Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records. So, when I left Pink Floyd, I guess I had two, no three choices open to me - Not to do it anymore, which is daft as I was writing songs, although I suppose I could have written for other people, but I like making records; so I could either do it as Roger Waters or I could have got together with other people and said hey, why don't we start a band? But my view of bands had been jaundiced slightly by my previous experience, so I think that was something I never considered.
- Roger Waters - Gold - 1992


I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien culture seeing the death of this planet - coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around; finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why our end came before its time and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death..
- Roger Waters - Amused to Death syndicate Radio Premiere 1992


If you give a man a Les Paul guitar, he doesn't become Eric Clapton. If you give a man an amp and a synthesizer, he doesn't become whoever. He doesn't become us.
- Roger Waters - Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii


In the finished article, the only thing that is important is whether it moves you or not. There is nothing else that is important at all.
- Roger Waters - Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii


Well, he's schizophrenic. And has been since 1968.
- Roger Waters - re Syd Barrett - Australian Radio 1988


Oh, they [the Media] definitely don't want to know the real Barrett story... there are no facts involved in the Barrett story so they can make up any story they like, and they do. There's a vague basis in fact: Syd was in the band and he did write the material on the first album, 80% of it, but that's all. It is only that one album and that's what people don't realise. That first album and one track on the second. That's all - nothing else.
- Roger Waters - re Syd Barrett - Lost In The Woods by Julian Palacios 1997


I could never aspire to Syd's crazed insights and perceptions. In fact for a long time I wouldn't have dreamt of claiming any insights whatsoever. I'll always credit Syd with the connection he made between his personal unconscious and the collective group unconscious. It's taken me 15 years to get anywhere near there. Even though he was clearly out of control when making his two solo albums, some of the work is staggeringly evocative. It's the humanity of it all that's so impressive. It's about deeply felt values and beliefs. Maybe that's what 'Dark Side of the Moon' was aspiring to. A similar feeling.
- Roger Waters - re Syd Barrett - Lost In The Woods by Julian Palacios 1997


The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime.
You shuffle in gloom of the sickroom
And talk to yourself as you die.
Life is a short, warm moment
And death is a long cold rest.
You get your chance to try in the twinkling of an eye-
Eighty years, with luck, or even less.

(Free Four - Obscured by Clouds 1972)


All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.

(Breathe - The Dark Side of the Moon 1973)


Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find, ten years have gone behind you
No one told you when to run, You missed the starting gun.

(Time - The Dark Side of the Moon 1973)


Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

(Time - The Dark Side of the Moon 1973)


How I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
swimming in a fishbowl
year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

(Wish You Were Here - Wish You Were Here album 1975)


The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me down to lie
Through pastures green He leadeth me
The silent waters by.
With bright knives He releaseth my soul
He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places
He converteth me to lamb cutlets
For lo, He hath great power and great hunger
When cometh the day we lowly ones
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water

(Sheep - paraphrasing Psalm 23 from the Bible - Animals album 1977)


Wave upon wave of demented avengers
march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream

(Sheep - Animals album 1977)


When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who
Would hurt the children in any way they could
By pouring their derision
upon anything we did
Exposing every weakness
However carefully hidden by the kid
But in the town it was well known
When they got home at night
Their fat and psychopathic wives
Would thrash them within inches of their lives!

(The Happiest Days of Our Lives - The Wall album 1979)


We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teacher! Leave them Kids alone!

(Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 - The Wall album 1979)


You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream has gone
And I have become
Comfortably Numb

(Comfortably Numb - The Wall album 1979)


Through the fish-eyed lens of tear-stained eyes
I can barely define the shape of this moment in time
and far from flying high in clear blue skies
I'm spiralling down to the hole in the ground where I hide

(The Final Cut - The Final Cut album 1983)


And now from where I stand
Upon this hill I plundered from the pool
I look around, I search the skies
I shade my eyes, so nearly blind
And I see signs of half remembered days
I hear bells that chime in strange familiar ways
I recognise........
The hope you kindle in your eyes

- Roger Waters - 5.06 AM (Every Strangers Eyes) - The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking - 1985


And when they found our shadows
Grouped around the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death

- Roger Waters - 1992 - Amused to Death 1992


Regarding the spate of High School shootings of 1999 - 'In the Colorado shootings, the media seemed to change their tack a bit. Though they attached ghoulishly to it, covered it 24 hours a day and even gave it a logo like 'Horror in the Rockies', they did address issues of alienation and pain rather than just saying, 'oh, these aberrant teen-agers have to be stamped out.' After denigrating self-help ideas for the last 20 years, the media are beginning to look at the psychology and not just the police work.'
- Roger Waters - USA Today 1999


Oh, for f*ck sake stop lighting off fireworks and shouting & screaming I'm trying to sing a song! I mean I don't care. If you don't want to hear it. You know f*ck you. I'm sure there are a lot of people here who do want to hear it. So why don't you just be quiet. If you want to light your fireworks off go outside and light them off out there and if you want to shout and scream well then go and do it out there.... but I am trying to sing a song that some people want to listen to. I want to listen to it.
- Roger Waters - during a concert for the 'Animals' tour in Montreal Quebec - 1977


I like to think oysters transcend national barriers, Adrian
- Roger Waters - in an interview with director Adrian Maben - Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii video

Q: What does Pink Floyd and Dale Ernhart have in common?
A: The Wall!

Q: What does Pink Floyd, Princess Di and Dale Earnhardt have in common?
A: They all had a hit with the wall....