Robert Plant

There are some people in here who are not journalists. There’s a masseuse in here who’s not a journalist – I think that’s ever so exciting.

Really, life is life. You do a lot of different things and you have great adventures but there’s not a lot to talk about unless you’re in the middle of an adventure at the time. Circumspection is not one of my better, favorite conditions, really.

The events between 1968 and 1980 were the kind of cornerstone for everything I’ve been able to do, they gave me the springboard.

[On encountering the music of Umm Kulthum] I was intrigued by the scales, initially, and obviously the vocal work. The way she sang, the way she could hold a note, you could feel the tension, you could tell that everybody, the whole orchestra, would hold a note until she wanted to change.

The whole idea of music, from the beginning of time, was for people to be happy.

I don’t have a recollection of mostly anybody I’ve hung out with.

One Christmas, when Freddie and I were flatmates in Kensington, we were trying to cook Christmas dinner but all we had was a packet of bread sauce that you make with water. We used to dream of a can of beans. (…) At Ridge Farm, when we weren’t working we would swim, play bad tennis, bad snooker and be beaten at table tennis by Freddie. I think he had been the champion at his boarding school and I never, ever saw him lose a game. That summer was more like a youth club rather than wild parties. In the evenings we would go down to the pub, come back to the barn and play more music.

In Los Angeles, they don’t want you to fail, they want you to die.

I laugh about it now. It was ridiculous, and it was calculatedly decadent. It was pretty horrendous, really. I remember feeling a bit ill at times. You know, in those days, the thing was to live it. And we lived it and loved it, and it was great. But that is another era.

If you really love someone, you shouldn’t have to work at it. You finish each others’ sentences and have the same sense of humor.

(on his feuds with many of his fellow rappers) If they keep comin’ at me, I’ll just keep responding back until they don’t exist anymore. I got the time and energy to ruin what is left of their careers, if they want to do that.

I think maybe we (Queen) were subconsciously influenced by The Beatles’ albums, I think really, especially the later ones, like Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road. They were very eclectic albums.

I believe in large families. Every woman should have at least three husbands.

[on the “The Notebook” script] I’m a sucker for those sweeping love stories. When I read the script, I couldn’t stop crying! I just had such a powerful, instantaneous reaction – it was written so well.

I want to try a lot of things that I haven’t tried. You know, I did a thriller (Red Eye) after this, because it was so different and it was a genre I hadn’t worked in yet. Then I did a beautiful family ensemble drama. And next? I don’t know. I might go off to do a small independent in New York. I’m not sure. The quality of material is important but, basically, I’m open to anything. I like to stay open to anything.

Florida, just because you’re shaped like some combination of a gun and a d*ck doesn’t mean you have to act that way.

I love Led Zeppelin, they were four prodigiously talented musicians. The magical combination of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant underpinned by the best rhythm section, John Paul Jones on bass and the best rock n’roll drummer in the world, John Bonham.

Drug companies are a bit like high school boyfriends. They’re much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they’re in there.

I’d say I’m a bit of a fatalist but not as much as I was. I used to be like “whatever happens happens” and have that innate fatalistic outlook. But I think it’s more about what you are thinking in your own mind that is the most powerful aspect of controlling your own life.

I got a role in this movie called Freeway playing this really angry, aggressive, violent young woman who believed wholeheartedly in the truth. I had such satisfaction afterward, and I thought, That’s what I want to do.

Welcome to The Daily Show, I’m John Oliver. Jon Stewart is still not here. He is currently living out a live-action Lord of the Rings role-playing experience deep in the New Zealand wilderness.