“Why would you want to be anything else if you're Mick Jagger?”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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?”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“Preaching is tax free. Very little to do with God, a lot to do with money”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“True friends. Hardest thing to find, but you never look for them - they found you ; you just grow into each other”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“I firmly believe if you want to be a guitar player, you better start on acoustic and then graduate to electric. Don’t think you’re going to be Townshend or Hendrix just because you can go wee wee wah wah, and all the electronic tricks of the trade. First you’ve got to know that fucker. And you go to bed with it. If there’s no babe around, you sleep with it. She’s just the right shape.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“My life is full of broken halos.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“Love has sold more songs than you've had hot dinners.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“One of the great things about songwrighting; it's not an intellectual experience”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“[John] Belushi was an extreme experience even by my standards.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“The big rules of knife fighting are (a) do not try it at home, and (b) the whole point is never, ever use the blade. It is there to distract your opponent. While he stares at the gleaming steel, you kick his balls to kingdom come--he's all yours. Just a tip!”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“Its called a playground, but its nearer to a battlefield. It can be brutal”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“The thing about being a songwriter is,even if you been fucked over, you can find consolation in writing about it, and pour it out. Everything has something to do with something; nothing is divorced. It becomes an experience,a feeling or a aconglomeration of experiences...”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“I can’t imagine what other people think cold turkey is like. It is fucking awful. On the scale of things, it’s better than having your leg blown off in the trenches. It’s better than starving to death. But you don’t want to go there. The whole body just sort of turns itself inside out and rejects itself for three days. You know in three days it’s going to calm down. It’s going to be the longest three days you’ve spent in your life, and you wonder why you’re doing this to yourself when you could be living a perfectly normal fucking rich rock star life. And there you are puking and climbing walls. Why do you do that to yourself? I don’t know. I still don’t know. Your skin crawling, your guts churning, you can’t stop your limbs from jerking and moving about, and you’re throwing up and shitting at the same time, and shit’s coming out your nose and your eyes, and the first time that happens for real, that’s when a reasonable man says, “I’m hooked.” But even that doesn’t stop a reasonable man from going back on it.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“And you listen to some of that meticulous Mozart stuff and Vivaldi and you realize that they knew that too. They knew when to leave one note just hanging up there where it illegally belongs and let it dangle in the wind and turn a dead body into a living beauty.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“I was husband for a week. Changed the baby's diapers. There's somebody in a suburb in Melbourne who doesn't even know i wiped his ass”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“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”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart," Richards notes, "is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart." Keith Richards from his autobiography”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“La gente me pregunta "por qué no lo dejas?". El hecho es que no me puedo retirar hasta que no estire la pata. Creo que no acaban de entender lo que gano con todo esto. No lo hago sólo por el dinero ni por ti. Lo hago por mi.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“That was the biggest fear. I'd rather clean up before I went on the road. It's bad enough cleaning up by yourself, but the idea of putting the whole tour on the line because I could'n make it was too much; even for me”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
“A familiar Gusism was to greet a friend with 'Hello, don't be a cunt all your life.”
― Keith Richards, quote from Life
Keith Richards
Born place: in Dartford, Kent, England, The United Kingdom
Born date December 18, 1943
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“For once I didn't look away immediately. I forced myself to meet her contemptuous gaze. I allowed myself be swept away by it, to drown in it - the way I'd done so many times before. The way I would willingly do again. Because at least she was here to hate me. At least I had that. I watched my daughter conjure up the filthiest look in her vast arsenal before she turned away with complete disdain. I didn't mind that so much. It meant I could watch her, drink her in without her protest.
Look at our daughter, Callum. Isn't she beautiful, so very beautiful? She laughs like me, but when she smiles... Oh Callum, when she smiles, it's picnics in Celebration Park and sunsets on our beach and our very first kiss all over again. When Callie Rose smiles at me, she lights up my life.
When Callie Rose smiles at me.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Checkmate
“Je ne me sens jamais vivre plus intensément que quand je m'échappe à moi-même pour devenir n'importe qui.”
― André Gide, quote from The Counterfeiters
“Come on . . .” Stephen called back over his shoulder.”
― Christopher Rice, quote from A Density of Souls
“I would die again for you, Lucinda," he murmured.
"I don't want you to die for me. I want you to live." Pulling his face down, she kissed him. Again and again, until he kissed her back with growing passion and until his body stopped shuddering. "I love you," she whispered against his mouth, knowing he wouldn't—couldn't—say it, himself.
And then he surprised her.
"I love you, Lucinda," he whispered back. "I wish I could be what you want.”
“She lifted her head to look him in his deep blue eyes. "You are what I want, Robert. Even before I knew.”
― Suzanne Enoch, quote from England's Perfect Hero
“The unfolding over time of a great idea is like the growth of a fractal crystal, allowing details and refinements to multiply endlessly — but only in ever-increasing scale.”
― quote from Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
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