Out of everything I've lost, I miss my mind the most!
Maybe it's not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.
It had a huge impact on me, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – and I was very proud when I found out that Kurt Cobain was a fan of mine. I thought he was awesome.
That night, at God knows what hour, Bill phoned me up and shouted, ‘Ozzy, I think my house is haunted!’ ‘Sell tickets then,’ I told him, and put the phone down.
Hating people isn’t a productive way of living. So what’s the point in hating anyone? There’s enough hate in the world as it is, without me adding to it.
I love you all; I love you more than life itself, but you're all fucking mad.
You learn who your friends are when the shit hits the fan.
I keep hearing this [expletive] thing that guns don't kill people, but people kill people. If that's the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?
What can go wrong will go wrong.
I’m a lunatic by nature, and lunatics don’t need training – they just are.
I used to get upset by people not understanding me, but I’ve made a career out of it now.
When you’re in love, it’s not just about the messing around in the sack, it’s about how empty you feel when they’re gone.
They said I would never write this book. Well, f**k ’em – ’cos here it is. All I have to do now is remember something... Bollocks. I can’t remember anything.
Pink Floyd was music for rich college kids, and we were the exact f**king opposite of that.
The funny thing is, I was never much of a fighter. Better a live coward than a dead hero, that was my motto.
The most unbelievable thing about my behaviour is that I was convinced it was entirely f**king normal.
It’s sad, y’know, what money does to people.
I remember saying to Tony [Iommi], ‘Did you hear how heavy that Led Zeppelin album sounded?’ Without missing a beat, he replied, ‘We’ll be heavier.’
Tell me I'm a sinner I got news for you I spoke to God this morning and he don't like you! Don't you try and teach me no original sin; I don't need your pity for the shape I'm in
The power of people, when they focus on something positive, never fails to amaze me.
I don’t know whose brilliant idea that was, but it wasn’t mine, that’s for sure.
You can never take the violence back.
You’ve got to try and take things to the next level, or you’ll just get stuck in a rut.
In 1964 something totally unexpected happened. I got a job I enjoyed.
Mind you, it’s all bullshit with wine, isn’t it? It’s just f**king vinegar with a fizz, no matter what the tasters say.
I don’t remember where we first played ‘Black Sabbath’, but I can sure as hell remember the audience’s reaction: all the girls ran out of the venue, screaming.
They teach you how to handle life in England, but they don’t teach you a thing about death. There’s no book telling you what to do when your mum or dad dies.
I hated school. Hated it.
All rehab can do is tell you what’s wrong with you and then suggest ways for you to get better.
I didn’t have a clue what love was about until I met Sharon.
But the thing with us was, we didn’t really need anyone to make us world famous – we were already halfway there.
Still, one of the few good things about being dyslexic is that when I say I don’t read reviews, I mean I don’t read reviews.
Of all the things I miss, it's my mind I miss the most
I think that anyone who eats meat should visit a slaughterhouse at least once in their life, just to see what goes on. It’s a bloody, filthy, putrid f**king business.
'OSBOURNE!’ he shouted. ‘YOU’RE A DISGRACE TO YOURSELF AND TO THIS SCHOOL. BRING ME A SHOE.’ The room went so quiet you could have heard a mouse fart.
Y’know, swearing is just part of who we are – we’re forever effing and blinding.
As far as we were concerned, we were just a blues band that had decided to write some scary music.
Officially, we didn’t have a band leader. Unofficially, we all knew it was Tony [Iommi].
No record mogul had created Black Sabbath, so no record mogul could tell Black Sabbath what to do.
My wife can sniff out a lie from six thousand miles away. And I’m the world’s worst liar, anyway.
‘Wow, dude, come in,’ said Tommy [Lee], when I rang the door-bell. ‘I can’t believe it. Ozzy Osbourne’s in my house.’
I’d always admired The Beatles for starting out as a bubblegum pop group and then getting heavier and heavier as their albums went on, and here was me going in the opposite direction.
I remember taking my entire wardrobe with me on that trip. It consisted of one shirt on a wire hanger, and one pair of underpants in a carrier bag.
The music business is like any other business, y’know? When sales are going well, everything’s hunky-f**king-dory. But the second something goes wrong, it’s all blood and law-suits.
We’d recorded Black Sabbath in one day. Sabotage took about four thousand years.
I don’t think we [Black Sabbath] ever got a good review for anything we did. Which is why I never bother with reviews.
On Friday the thirteenth of February 1970, Black Sabbath went on sale. I felt like I’d just been born. But the critics f**king hated it.
I was a free man, and I’d survived prison without being arse raped or beaten to a pulp. So how come I felt so f**king sad?
I even tried to join the army, but they wouldn’t have me. The bloke in the uniform took one look at my ugly mug and said, ‘Sorry, we want subjects, not objects'.
I wasn’t exactly much fun to be around. Being with me was like falling into an abyss.
I’d always wanted to play an instrument myself, but my folks didn’t have the dough to buy me one, and I didn’t have the patience to learn anyway. My attention span was five seconds.
One kid at school who never beat me up was Tony Iommi. He was in the year above me, and everyone knew him ’cos he could play the guitar.
When I was growing up, no one ever recovered from cancer. I mean, the doc would always tell you it was survivable, but everyone knew that was just bullshit to calm you down.
Shock is a very weird thing.
When I slept outside in winter, it wasn’t unusual for me to wake up blue in the face with icicles on my nose. In those days, there was no such thing as hypothermia.
Bands like The Move, Traffic and The Moody Blues were proving that you didn’t have to be from Liverpool to be successful.
And if it wasn’t as good as before, what was the point of doing it? There wasn’t a point, as far as I was concerned.
Nothing more, nothing less...
I have the greatest respect for Tony Iommi.
Five kids in one lifetime ain’t bad – and I love them all so much. They’re the best things that ever happened to me, no question about it.
The way I was boozing was a kind of suicide. It was only gonna be a matter of time.
After a real snake ended up on stage one night, it was well and truly pissed off about being on stage with Ozzy Osbourne, that snake was.
‘Someone’s gonna die before this is over,’ I said to Doc McGhee. [...] ‘I don’t think someone’s gonna die, Ozzy. I think we’re all gonna die.’
It’s gotta be any parent’s worst nightmare when they lose their child.
Reviews? Didn’t read ’em.
But one of the many problems with being an alcoholic is that when people tell you how bad you are when you’re drunk, you’re usually drunk. So you just keep getting drunk.
Taking five or ten or fifteen years to make an album, like Guns N’ Roses did, is just f**king ridiculous, end of story. By that time, your career’s died, been resurrected, and then died again.
I always thought that whatever I had was temporary.
I’m no good with business, me. I’m the last person to ask when it comes to contracts and dough and all that.
The worse I got, the more I worried that Sharon would leave me. And the more I worried, the worse I got.
I loved being a dad. It’s just so much fun watching these little people you’ve brought into the world as they develop and grow up.
As for the kids, once the damage is done with a divorce, you can’t ever make it right.
I’ve said to my kids, ‘I don’t want you to think I jumped away from you and clicked my heels and said bon voyage. It wasn’t like that at all. It just about destroyed me.'
I’d been on the road for twenty-five years, pretty much. I was like a mouse on a wheel: album, tour, album, tour, album, tour, album, tour.
Killing a pig for a good old fry-up is one thing. But there’s no excuse for being cruel, even if you’re a bored teenage kid.
That was the end of it. Lights out. For ever.
