Keith Richards Quotes
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Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn't get bored anywhere.
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Songwriting's a weird game. I never intended to become one - I fell into this by mistake, and I can't get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life.
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There's no substitute for live work to keep a band together.
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We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.
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Retire? I can't spell the word. I'd play in a wheelchair.
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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?
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I don't encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!
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If you're gonna get wasted, get wasted elegantly.
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I like it here in Austin. Anybody got a room?
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You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.
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The electric guitar meant that you could have a band with a drummer and a couple of guitars. And that put a lot of horn players out of work.
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There are certain guys that are band players and there's certain guys that ain't. If there's anybody lazier than me, it's Eric (Clapton).
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One minute I'm standing at Ronnie Scott's getting a standing ovation and the next minute, I'm on a marble slab...
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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.
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There's just certain styles of playing that you do play in your own way. Maybe it's in the way your fingers bend, for all I know. And so whenever you pick up the guitar it's not so much the sound of the instrument itself, it's like the ting that you add onto it-the attitude.
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If you are going to get wasted, then get wasted elegantly.
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Everybody starts by imitating their heroes. For me it was Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.
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Most guys I know are assholes. I have some great asshole friends, but that's not the point. Friendship has got nothing to do with that. It's can you hang, can you talk about this without any feeling of distance between you? Friendship is the diminishing of distance between people. That's what friendship is, and to me it's one of the most important things in the world.
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Some of my most outrageous nights- I can only believe actually happened because of corroborating evidence. No wonder I'm famous for partying! The ultimate party- if it's any good- you can't remember it.
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I occasionally borrow pot from my kids. They do a little weed occasionally. 'Here, Dad' — or more likely, 'Dad, have you got any?'
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My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.
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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.
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I can sustain the impetus over the long tours we do is by feeding off the energy that we get back from an audience. That's my fuel. All i've got is this burning energy, especially when i've got a guitar in my hands.
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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.