Syd Barrett Quotations

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hendrix was a perfect guitarist. 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.

I've got an idea that there must be someone to play with. If I was going to play properly, I should need some really good people.

I like songs that are simple.

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.

Fairy-tales are nice.

Im sorry I cant speak very coherently.

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.

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.

I'm disappearing, avoiding most things.

I'm full of dust and guitars.

But I can't find anybody. That's the problem. I don't know where they are. I mean, I've got an idea that there must be someone to play with. If I was going to play properly, I should need some really good people.

And what exactly is a dream and what exactly is a joke.

I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like. It's got a basket, a bell that rings and things to make it look good. I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.

You only have to read the lines of scribbly black and everything shines.

There's so much around, you don't know what to listen to. All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff, and old jazz records.

It's rather difficult to think of anybody being really interested in me. But you know, man, I am totally together.

All middle men are bad.

In the future, bands are going to have to offer more than a pop show. They are going to have to an offer a well presented theatre show

I’m not anything that you think I am

I wasnt always this introverted.

I was sleeping in the woods one night after a gig we'd played somewhere, when I saw this girl appear before me. That girl was Emily. (on how he wrote "See Emily Play") "Chapter 24"-that was from the "I Ching", there was someone around who was very into that, most of the words came straight off that. "Lucifer Sam" was another one-it didn't mean much to me at the time, but then three or four months later it came to mean a lot.