I am Ozzy

by Ozzy Osbourne

I would like to dedicate this book to all my fans. Because of you I’ve had such an amazing life. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless you all. Ozzy

‘You might not have a good education, but good manners don’t cost you anything.’

The only good thing about having dyslexia is that dyslexics are usually very creative people, or so I’ve been told. We think in unusual ways.

I think books are great, I do. To be able to lose yourself in a book is fucking phenomenal. Everyone should be able to do it.

Nowadays, you pick up something and you automatically go, ‘Oh, that’s got two hundred calories,’ or, ‘Oh, that’s got eight grams of saturated fat.’ But there was no such thing as a fucking calorie back then. There was only food on yer plate. And there was never enough of it, as far as I was concerned.

Old habits die hard.

I was never much of a fighter. Better a live coward than a dead hero, that was my motto.

Mouth drier than a Mormon wedding.

I’m a lunatic by nature, and lunatics don’t need training – they just are.

‘Look, mate, the only evil spirits I’m interested in are called whisky, vodka and gin.’

I’m telling you, the docs in those funny farms are more bonkers than the patients.

It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but I was already on Planet Booze.

I’m telling you, the ingenuity of alcoholics is something else. If only it could be put to some kind of good use. I mean, if you said to an alcoholic, ‘Look, the only way for you to get another drink is to cure cancer,’ the disease would be history in five seconds.

The bottom line is I don’t believe in a bloke called God in a white suit who sits on a fluffy cloud any more than I believe in a bloke called the Devil with a three-pronged fork and a couple of horns.

I was just so sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years is that I’m no good at dealing with people dying. It’s not that I’m afraid of it – I know that everyone’s gotta go eventually – but I can’t help thinking that there are only one or two ways of being brought into this world, but there are so many fucked-up ways of leaving it.

I just think that if you’re pissed off with someone, call them an arsehole, get it out of your system, and move on. It’s not like we’re on this earth very long.

And I hate the fact that you have to buy everyone a gift. Not because I’m tight – it’s just that you do it out of obligation, not because you want to. It’s always seemed like total bullshit to me.

When I was younger, I used to think the whole world was drunk. Then I moved to America and realised it’s just England that’s drunk.