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• Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue.

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• 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.

• That gives me tremendous encouragement and optimism for the human race in general, that people choose to go off and do their own things.

• I'm a ham. I was immediately attracted to fencing because it seemed like a romantic, melodramatic form of combat.

• Alice is much a focused rebellion, he's a fantastic cartoon character almost, if you like, and therefore he's still successful today-my kid, 11 years old, loves Alice Cooper.

• I don't even think that you can call Iron Maiden 100% real metal. Iron Maiden is beyond that and always has been. That is one of the things that America has always had a problem with, but right now we might be moving to a point where by America may actually understand what Maiden is all about. We'll see.

• I'll be arriving at the last possible minute and walking on stage raging and pillaging and then disappearing immediately afterwards.

• 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.

• I dreamt for years about making albums and doing world tours-I'd fulfilled all my ambitions in one year.

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

• I've always enjoyed reading lyrics, trying to do them more than just lyrics, trying to have some more meaning in them. I know a lot of people are just happy to have a kind of broken word lyrics. I just wonder why, there's no reason why they can't at least attempt to do something a bit better.

• (When asked if Heavy Metal inspired bad behaviour) You mean like selling arms to Iran, or all these guys doing insider dealings, or all the companies dumping Toxic Waste everywhere? But because they wear suits and ties, it's okay.