Keith Richards
You can't accuse me of anything I haven't already confessed to.Collection: Havens
It's a privilege just to wake up to a new day.Collection: New Day
Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life.Collection: Air
True friends. Hardest thing to find, but you never look for them - they found you ; you just grow into each otherCollection: True Friend
A painter's got a canvas. The writer's got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.Collection: Silence
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.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Inspirational
If you've gotta think about being cool, you ain't cool.Collection: Thinking
We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.Collection: Age
I'm all for a quiet life. I just didn't get one.Collection: Quiet
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.Collection: Baby
The rock's easy, but the roll is another thing.Collection: Rocks
You don't find a style. A style finds youCollection: Guitar
Preaching is tax free. Very little to do with God, a lot to do with moneyCollection: Littles
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.Collection: Teenage
Some people think I'm a mythical genius, others think I'm a junkie madman.Collection: Music
You're always learning about this thing everytime you pick it upCollection: Player
I read the Bible sometimes, but it bores me to death. I just want to know what other people find so bloody fascinating.Collection: People
What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It's the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician: 'He passed it on.'Collection: Tombstone
One of the great things about songwrighting; it's not an intellectual experienceCollection: Intellectual
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 just 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.Collection: Father
[John] Belushi was an extreme experience even by my standards.Collection: Standards
George Jones is a national treasure and should be treated accordingly. A unique style so often emulated even inadvertently.Collection: Unique
There's just certain styles of playing that you do play in your own way. Maybe it's in the way your fingers bend, for all I know. And so whenever you pick up the guitar it's not so much the sound of the instrument itself, it's like the ting that you add onto it-the attitude.Collection: Attitude
Rap - so many words, so little said.Collection: Rap
One minute I'm standing at Ronnie Scott's getting a standing ovation and the next minute, I'm on a marble slabCollection: Ovation
If you're gonna get wasted, get wasted elegantly.Collection: Ifs
What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.Collection: Nice
Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.Collection: Rocks
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.Collection: Distance
Retire? I can't spell the word. I'd play in a wheelchair.Collection: Inspirational
The electric guitar was vital in helping what I've achieved where would I be without it? Playing awfully quietly, for a start.Collection: Guitar
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?Collection: People
I only get ill when I give up drugs... I don't have a drug problem, I have a police problem.Collection: Giving Up
I've got nothing against daylight. I don't live totally nocturnally. Only when I feel like it. Which is most of the time.Collection: Daylight
No broken hearts, no broken necks.Collection: Heart
Poison's not bad. It's a matter of how much.Collection: Poison
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.Collection: People
What's the big deal about still working? Retirement age is sixty-five, and that's at a normal job - and I ain't there yet.Collection: Retirement
Everybody starts by imitating their heroes. For me it was Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.Collection: Hero
One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.Collection: Heart
It’s one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It’s another thing to play with him.Collection: Song
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.Collection: People
I don't regret nuthin.Collection: Regret
Why would you want to be anything else if you're Mick Jagger?Collection: Want
Women are a beautiful complication, and I look forward to far more beauties and far more complications.Collection: Beautiful