Keith Richards Quotes - Page 4

I don't encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!

I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor . Everything was there in his playing - the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song.

The electric guitar was vital in helping what I've achieved where would I be without it? Playing awfully quietly, for a start.

I only get ill when I give up drugs... I don't have a drug problem, I have a police problem.

But I'm not here just to make records and money. I'm here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: "Do you know this feeling?

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

I've got nothing against daylight. I don't live totally nocturnally. Only when I feel like it. Which is most of the time.

No broken hearts, no broken necks.

Poison's not bad. It's a matter of how much.

When I listen to what I did under the influence - 10 years of work - I don't think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn't have that much to do with it.

I don't know if people in New York recognize me or not. I'm not really conscious of it. If somebody stops me, then I suddenly realize that people are looking at me, but other times they may be doing it and I don't even know because I'm engrossed in something else.

In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they just all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, “It's me, your father,” but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell.

I've never had my hair cut by anybody, I do it all myself.

Whatever side I take, I know well that I will be blamed.

This is the rock 'n' roll life, and you had to invent it as you went along. There was no textbook to say how you operate this machinery.

I don't trust doctors. It's not to say there ain't some good ones, but on a general level, no, I wouldn't trust 'em at all.

I've never had inner turmoil about all this. You find a lot of people these days who cannot stand to be alone. You could lock me up in solitary for weeks on end, and I'd keep myself amused.

You get onstage and make other people feel happy. Make them feel good.

Everybody starts by imitating their heroes. For me it was Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.

It’s one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It’s another thing to play with him.

What's the big deal about still working? Retirement age is sixty-five, and that's at a normal job - and I ain't there yet.

One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

Women are a beautiful complication, and I look forward to far more beauties and far more complications.

Why would you want to be anything else if you're Mick Jagger?