Keith Richards Quotes

To me, the main thing about living on this planet is to know who the hell you are and be real about it. That's the reason I'm still alive.

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

Rap - so many words, so little said.

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

The rock's easy, but the roll is another thing.

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

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.

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

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!"

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.

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

You don't find a style. A style finds you

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

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

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.

Songwriting's a weird game.

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

Preaching is tax free. Very little to do with God, a lot to do with money

We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

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'm not getting old I'm evolving.

Nobody wants to get old, but nobody wants to die young either.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We do what we want to do. We write songs. We try not to repeat ourselves too much. We have our own sound and our own way of doing things. Up until now it has always been enjoyable. None of the members have ever got to the point where they don't want to be involved in it ... It's not entirely possible for me to stand back and look at the Rolling Stones because being a part of it you can't. I wish that I could just sit in the audience for one night and see the show. Everyone in the band has said that at some point. But then you wouldn't be seeing the whole band. And that's the problem with that.

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

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

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

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

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.'

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!

No broken hearts, no broken necks.

When you're 20, you can't imagine being 30. When you're 30, you can't imagine being 40. When you're 40, you can't imagine being 100.

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.

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

The Stones in a club is still the ultimate rush.

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

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

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

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.