Keith Richards Quotations

The only things Mick and I disagree about is the band, the music and what we do.

When you're supported by millions all over the world, you can either go nuts, or try to feed off the goodwill.

Everybody's got a different way of telling a story - and has different stories to tell.

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.

It's an addiction... and addiction is something I should know something about.

To me, my biggest fear is getting a big head, and that is when I get the hammer. Because it's very easy in this game to believe you're something special.

It's great to be here. It's great to be anywhere.

I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn't get bored anywhere.

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

You've got the sun, you've got the moon, and you've got the Rolling Stones.

I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.

If you say I'm great, thank you very much. But I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?

You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe - and you have the Rolling Stones!

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.

Good music comes out of people playing together, knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a TV screen.

Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn't get bored anywhere.

About myself I have no great illusions. I know what I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I ain't. I'm always hoping to surprise myself. But I do have a love of music and I do love to communicate it, and that's the best I can do, really. And I can raise a good family, too.

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

Hey, we just enjoy it. I think we think we're getting the hang of this thing, you know?

And it was a very, very fruitful and great relationship between the Stones and The Beatles. It was very, very friendly.

If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use both feet.

You didn't know whether Chuck Berry was black or white - it was not a concern.

Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.

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

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.

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

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

I only get ill when I give up drugs

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

You don't start to play your guitar thinking you're going to be running an organisation that will maybe generate millions.

To me, as long as we've known each other, I've always thought Mick's most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance.

To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing.

I've always been suspicious of TV, I've always found music and video to be an unhappy marriage.

I've never tried to achieve anything. I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records.

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

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.

There's no substitute for live work to keep a band together.

The Stones in a club is still the ultimate rush.

Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick, and some of that stuff was made on wire, not even tape, let alone digital.

Yes, I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.

I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records.

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

Our biggest predictor of a student dropping out is socially and economically disadvantaged background, ... Some of the kids who don't know if they have a roof over their head, it's sort of difficult to motivate them to be in school.

Other than its sense of rhythm, it's music by the tone-deaf for the tone-deaf.

I thought it was about time he owned up and stepped out of that closed shell. I knew he went through bad periods, even if he didn't want to write about it. I used to wrestle with that too. As a writer, you don't want to bore people with your own story. But you eventually realize that you're not the only one who is lonely or having problems.

You get too close to it. You have to wait for the reaction,

There was a time when Mick and I could have argued forever over the most mundane things. The color of the album cover could turn into a life-and-death debate. I used to think he was getting too big for his boots, and he probably thought I was a cantankerous sod.

There's a young man on my team that got 23 rebounds tonight, and that's probably a big reason (for the win). It got to be where we shoot it, miss it, and Paul will get it back.

There's this perception that Mick and I are always fighting. Most of it is very smooth sailing. Every time we stumble across the odd spat, everyone hears about it.

Nothing presented here tonight has convinced us. The program at Edith Williams School is in its infancy. How can you pattern Positive Connections after a program that is not even off the ground yet?

So far I gotta believe (praise) because nobody has said anything else so it must be cool. For a little while when you've finished them . . . I wonder.

In a strange way, albums can take on their own personality,

If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.

I remember a sense of doom when our first record got in the top 20. It was conventional wisdom at the time that it would all be over in two years.

I haven't met him yet, I can't wait. I'm a Stones fan.

I didn't know you guys were so big,

The only new technology that interests me is when it sort of throws me back soundwise. And I can think, "Wow, that means I can go onstage and sound like Scotty Moore now and again!"

I personally believe that most people that play an instrument would be able to write a few songs here and there. But they say, "I tried, I can't do it" and give up and don't try it again; they get too discouraged.

It made me sick - my name's Keith Richards. It hardly makes it against Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters, does it? On my first guitar I had Boy Blue written - just pathetic. But that was as good as I got at the time.

George Jones is a national treasure and should be treated accordingly. A unique style so often emulated even inadvertently.

I occasionally borrow pot from my kids. They do a little weed occasionally. 'Here, Dad' — or more likely, 'Dad, have you got any?'

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

If you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses because they're asleep.

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

I thought rock and roll was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expression of rebellion. It used to be one channel you could take without ever havin' to kiss arse, you know?

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

It's a privilege just to wake up to a new day.

If you're gonna get wasted, get wasted elegantly.

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

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.

What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It's the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician; HE PASSED IT ON.

No broken hearts, no broken necks.

To me, it's important to prove that this isn't just teenage kids' s**t and you should feel embarrassed when you're over forty and still doing it.

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.

Rap-so many words, so little said.

Rock n Roll is music from the neck down.

[John] Belushi was an extreme experience even by my standards.

The Beatles were basically a vocal band.

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

There's a demon in me, and he's still around. Without the dope, we have a bit more of a chat these days.

I don't think rock n' roll songwriters should worry about art. I don't think it comes into it...as far as I'm concerned, Art is just short for Arthur.

Well, I'm not putting death on the agenda," he told the Times. "I don't want to see my old friend Lucifer just yet. He's the guy I'm gonna see, isn't it? I'm not going to the other place, let's face it.

It's called the mysterious rhythm of life, ... I can't quite account for it. It's probably an addiction, quite honestly. I need that shot of stage every two or three years.

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

I haven't stopped smoking...anything

I was Number 1 on the Who's Likely to Die list for 10 years...I was really disappointed when I fell off that list.

A gut-string classical Spanish guitar, a sweet, lovely little lady. The smell of it. Even now, to open a guitar case, when it's an old wooden guitar, I could crawl in and close the lid.

I've never turned blue in someone else's bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.

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

Anything you throw yourself into, you better get yourself out of.

You can't accuse me of anything I haven't already confessed to.

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

My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.

One minute I'm standing at Ronnie Scott's getting a standing ovation and the next minute, I'm on a marble slab

It's really good to be here and as I always say, it's really good to be anywhere!

I don't have a problem with drugs, I have a problem with policemen.

I don't regret nuthin...