Keith Richards Quotes

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

~ Keith Richards

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.

~ Keith Richards

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.

~ Keith Richards

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

~ Keith Richards

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

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.

~ Keith Richards

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

~ Keith Richards

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

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.

~ Keith Richards

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.

~ Keith Richards

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

~ Keith Richards

Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.

~ Keith Richards

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

~ Keith Richards

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.

~ Keith Richards

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.

~ Keith Richards

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.

~ Keith Richards

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

~ Keith Richards

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

~ Keith Richards