Keith Richards Quotes

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

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.

Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.

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

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.

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

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

True friends. Hardest thing to find, but you never look for them - they found you ; you just grow into each other

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

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

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

I'm not getting old I'm evolving.

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.

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

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

The public library is the great equaliser.

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

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

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

Some things get better with age. Like me.

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

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

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

To a musician or songwriter, your canvas is silence.

[joking about the length of the Rolling Stones' career] You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe - and you have the Rolling Stones!

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

I'm an unpure purist, something like that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 wave a flag for anything. I'm a musician.

We all have our own personal laboratories. Life is an experiment, and it's just a matter of getting the alchemical or chemical combination right.

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.

My life is full of broken halos.

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

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

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.

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

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

The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It's almost like Hari Kari. I intend to live to a 100 and go down in history.

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 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.

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.

It’s one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It’s another thing to play with him.

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

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.