Keith Richards Quotes - Page 2

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

You're sitting with some guys, and you're playing and you go, "Ooh, yeah!" That feeling is worth more than anything. There's a certain moment when you realize that you've actually just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you. You're elevated because you're with a bunch of guys that want to do the same thing as you. And when it works, baby, you've got wings. You know you've been somewhere most people will never get; you've been to a special place.

What is life but playing with time?

Preaching is tax free. Very little to do with God, a lot to do with money

You see, to me, the art of music is listening to it, not playing it. The real art of it is hearing it.

Guitar is easy, all it takes is 5 fingers, 6 strings and 1 a**hole

Let me be clear about this. I don't have a drug problem. I have a police problem.

I'm free of hypochondria-- although I've got everything else.

You don't find a style. A style finds you

I never plan anything, which is probably the difference between Mick and myself. Mick needs to know what he's gonna do tomorrow and I'm just happy to wake up to see who's hanging around. Mick's rock and I'm roll.

To me, the main thing about living on this planet is to know who the hell you are and be real about it. That's the reason I'm still alive.

Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.

What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.

I'd been an expert at taking beatings. Then I had a lucky break where I did a bully in, by total sheer luck. ... One minute I was the mark, and with just one swift move, I put the big man in school down. ... Once he was down, the whole atmosphere in the schoolyard changed. A huge cloud seemed to be lifted from me. ... I'd never been aware the cloud was so large.

We all have our own personal laboratories. Life is an experiment, and it's just a matter of getting the alchemical or chemical combination right.

I never thought I was wasted, but I probably was.

If you're cool, you don't know nothing about it. It just is, or you ain't.

The public library is the great equaliser.

It might appear that nothing is happening, but that's actually when it really happens.

Music works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in you have no idea what it can do to you.

Fame has killed more very talented guys than drugs. Jimi Hendrix didn't die of an overdose, he died of fame.

I consider my job [being a musician] is to have a little idea and nurture it and put it in some form that everybody else can understand and then sort of pass it on. It's really a passing through. In other words, you receive and you transmit.

To a musician or songwriter, your canvas is silence.

To me, life is a wild animal. You hope to deal with it when it leaps at you.

[joking about the length of the Rolling Stones' career] You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe - and you have the Rolling Stones!