Syd Barrett Quotes

1. I think young people should have a lot of fun. But I never seem to have any.  




2. I wasn't always this introverted.

3. It's always been too slow for me. Playing. The pace of things. I'm a fast sprinter. The trouble was, after playing in the group for a few months, I couldn't reach that point.

4. A lot of people want to make films and do photography and things, but I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing.

5. All middle men are bad.

6. I'm full of dust and guitars.

7. And what exactly is a dream, and what exactly is a joke?

8. I like songs that are simple.


9. It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here, and I'm most obliged to you for making it clear that I'm not here.

10. The only work I've done the last two years is interviews. I'm very good at it.

11. Well, I'm a painter, I was trained as a painter…I seem to have spent a little less time painting than I might've done…But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was getting bigger and bigger. 

12. Fairytales are nice.



13. That's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around. But too many people got in the way. 


14. I don't think I'm easy to talk about. I've got a very irregular head. And I'm not anything that you think I am anyway.

15. I remember the last time we were in the studio that Nick (Mason) ripped this fart. It was one of the most atrocious things the others had ever smelled in their lives. While Roger and Rick fled in terror, I asked Nick for seconds.

16. When we parted I had written everything for the group. My leaving sort of evened things out within the group.

17. (in response to being asked by David Gilmour what he was up to lately during an unexpected reunion in 1975, as written in Nick Mason's "Inside Out") Well, I've got a color telly, and a fridge. I've got some pork chops in the fridge, but the chops keep going off, so I have to keep buying more.

18. I'm sorry I can't speak very coherently.

19. We feel that in the future, groups are going to have to offer much more than just a pop show. They'll have to offer a well-presented theatre show.

20. I never felt so close to a guitar as that silver one with mirrors that I used on stage all the time.

21. Their choice of material was always very much to do with what they were thinking as architecture students. Rather unexciting people, I would've thought, primarily. I mean, anybody walking into an art school like that would've been tricked - maybe they were working their entry into an art school. 

22. I'd like to be rich. I'd like a lot of money to put into my physicals and to buy food for all my friends.

23. Living in Cambridge, with nature and everything, it's so clean.

24. If I'd stayed at college I would have become a teacher.

25. I'm disappearing, avoiding most things.


26. I don't really read a lot. Maybe I should.

27. Have you seen the roses? There's a whole lot of colors.

28. I do tend to take lines from other lines I like, and then write around them.

29. I think it's good if a song has more than one meaning. Maybe that kind of song can reach far more people.

30. I've just had an operation, but nothing too serious.



31. I'm treading the backward path. Mostly, I just waste my time.


32. Getting used to the studio and everything was fun, we freaked about a lot. I was working very hard then.


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