Top 120 Keith Richards Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Poison’s not bad. It’s a matter of how much.”

— Keith Richards

52. “I don’t encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!”

— Keith Richards

53. “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

54. “To make a rock’n’roll record, technology is the least important thing.”

— Keith Richards

55. “Hey, we just enjoy it. I think we think we’re getting the hang of this thing, you know?”

— Keith Richards

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

— Keith Richards

57. “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

58. “Some people think I’m a mythical genius, others think I’m a junkie madman.”

— Keith Richards

59. “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.”

— Keith Richards

60. “Women are a beautiful complication, and I look forward to far more beauties and far more complications.”

— Keith Richards

61. “You can’t accuse me of anything I haven’t already confessed to.”

— Keith Richards

62. “Love has sold more songs than you’ve had hot dinners.”

— Keith Richards

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

— Keith Richards

64. “Fame has killed more very talented guys than drugs. Jimi Hendrix didn’t die of an overdose, he died of fame.”

— Keith Richards

65. “Why would you want to be anything else if you’re Mick Jagger?”

— Keith Richards

66. “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.”

— Keith Richards

67. “I’m an unpure purist, something like that.”

— Keith Richards

68. “I personally believe that most people that play an instrument would be able to write a few songs here and there. But they say, “I tried, I can’t do it” and give up and don’t try it again; they get too discouraged.”

— Keith Richards

69. “I’ve never had my hair cut by anybody, I do it all myself.”

— Keith Richards

70. “You can’t always get what you want, but if you really need something, you usually find it.”

— Keith Richards

71. “I’ve been through more cold turkeys than there are freezers.”

— Keith Richards

72. “My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.”

— Keith Richards

73. “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.”

— Keith Richards

74. “I only get ill when I give up drugs.”

— Keith Richards

75. “I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory.”

— Keith Richards

76. “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.”

— Keith Richards

77. “Mick’s album was called She’s the Boss, which said it all. I’ve never listened to the entire thing all the way through. Who has? It’s like Mein Kampf. Everybody had a copy, but nobody listened to it.”

— Keith Richards

78. “I’ve got nothing against daylight. I don’t live totally nocturnally. Only when I feel like it. Which is most of the time.”

— Keith Richards

79. “Songwriting’s a weird game.”

— Keith Richards

80. “Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.”

— Keith Richards

81. “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.”

— Keith Richards

82. “Image is like a long shadow. Even when the sun goes down, you can see it. I think some of it is that there is so much pressure to be that person that you become it, maybe, to a certain point you can bear. It’s impossible not to end up being a parody of what you thought you were.”

— Keith Richards

83. “El silencio es el lienzo en blanco, el marco, sobre lo que trabajas; y no tratas de ahogarlo.”

— Keith Richards

84. “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

85. “One minute I’m standing at Ronnie Scott’s getting a standing ovation and the next minute, I’m on a marble slab.”

— Keith Richards

86. “Rap-so many words, so little said.”

— Keith Richards

87. “I look for ambiguity when I’m writing because life is ambiguous.”

— Keith Richards

88. “I read the Bible sometimes, but it bores me to death. I just want to know what other people find so bloody fascinating.”

— Keith Richards

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

— Keith Richards

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

— Keith Richards

91. “The electric guitar was vital in helping what I’ve achieved where would I be without it? Playing awfully quietly, for a start.”

— Keith Richards

92. “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.”

— Keith Richards

93. “George Jones is a national treasure and should be treated accordingly. A unique style so often emulated even inadvertently.”

— Keith Richards

94. “The electric guitar meant that you could have a band with a drummer and a couple of guitars. And that put a lot of horn players out of work.”

— Keith Richards

95. “I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records.”

— Keith Richards

96. “No broken hearts, no broken necks.”

— Keith Richards

97. “When I listen to what I did under the influence – 10 years of work – I don’t think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn’t have that much to do with it.”

— Keith Richards

98. “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!””

— Keith Richards

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

— Keith Richards

100. “The Stones in a club is still the ultimate rush.”

— Keith Richards