Keith Richards quotes:

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.

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

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.

Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.

Wild Horses" started in a B-minor chord, and Stu didn't play minor chords, "fucking Chinese music.

There was a knock on our dressing-room door. Our manager shouted, 'Keith! Ron! The Police are here!' Oh, man, we panicked, flushed everything down the john. Then the door opened and it was Stewart Copeland and Sting.

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 turned blue in someone else's bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.

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

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

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

The Beatles were basically a vocal band.

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

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

I like it here in Austin. Anybody got a room?

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.

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

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

You're always learning about this thing everytime you pick it up

If you've gotta think about being cool, you ain't cool.

I only get ill when I give up drugs.

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

And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.

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

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.

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

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

The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant. ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer.

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

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.

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.

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.

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

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

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.

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

One of the great things about songwrighting; it's not an intellectual experience

Classic of '43. Don't knock it. A Vintage year.

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 never sleep alone. If there is no one to sleep next to, I'll sleep next to a stuffed animal. It makes me feel secure and safe. It's a little embarrassing to admit it; I'm an old man now. It's important to me though.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Before Elvis, everything was in black and white. Then came Elvis. Zoom, glorious Technicolor.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

... I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel..

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

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.

A painter's got a canvas. The writer's got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.

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

Art is the last thing I'm worried about when I'm writing a song. As far as I'm concerned, art is just short for 'Arthur.'

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?

But I've always felt very comfortable on stage, even if I screw up. It always felt like a dog, this is my turf, piss around it. While I'm here, nothing else can happen. All I can do is screw up. Otherwise, have a good time.

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

Everybody thinks you reach a certain age and you're a grownup, but it's not true. Nobody grows up until the day they croak.

Everything theyâ??d been brought up not to do, they could do at a rock-and-roll show.

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

From the 12th Congressional District Hopeful William Jefferson Clinton during the Nixon investigations. I wanted to share some information I've turned up regarding two of your Clinton quotes.

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

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

I am not doing it just for the money or for you.I am doing it for me.

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.

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.

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

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

I don't regret nuthin...

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.

I don't wave a flag for anything. I'm a musician.

I haven't stopped smoking...anything

I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory.

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.

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

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

I only get ill when I give up drugs

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.

I read the Bible sometimes, but it bores me to death. I just want to know what other people find so bloody fascinating.

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 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.

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.

I wouldn't warm to [Chuck Berry] even if I was cremated next to him.

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.

I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again.

If you are going to get wasted, then get wasted elegantly.

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

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

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

I'm all for a quiet life. I just didn't get one.

I'm an unpure purist, something like that.

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

I'm not getting old I'm evolving.

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 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.

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

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

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

Its called a playground, but its nearer to a battlefield. It can be brutal

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.

It's good to be anywhere.

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

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

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.

Love has sold more songs than you've had hot dinners.

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.

Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life.

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

My life is full of broken halos.

No broken hearts, no broken necks.