“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.”

“I was twenty now, and had given up all hope of being a singer or ever getting out of Aston. PA system or no PA system, it wasn’t going to happen. I’d convinced myself that there was no point in even trying, because I was just going to fail, like I had at school, at work, and at everything else I’d ever tried. ‘You ain’t no good as a singer,’ I told myself. ‘You can’t even play an instrument, so what hope d’you have?’”

“I don’t know whose brilliant idea that was, but it wasn’t mine, that’s for sure.”

“I wasn’t exactly much fun to be around. Being with me was like falling into an abyss.”

“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.”

“‘Ozzy, why do you drink so much? What’s the point?’The right answer to that question was: because I’m an alcoholic; because I have an addictive personality; because whatever I do, I do it addictively. But I didn’t know any of that back then.”

“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.'”