Top 60 Steve Vai Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We may be human, but we’re still animals.”

— Steve Vai

2. “The only thing that’s holding you back, is the way you’re thinking.”

— Steve Vai

3. “The level of achievement that we have at anything, is a reflection, of how well, we were able to focus on it. Because the only thing that’s holding you back, is the way you’re thinking.”

— Steve Vai

4. “The tone is in your fingers, not in your amp or effects.”

— Steve Vai

5. “Find what you’re best at and exaggerate it.”

— Steve Vai

6. “My main calling in life is to seek and achieve spiritual balance, and to express that through my instrument. Everything else is here today, gone later today.”

— Steve Vai

7. “If I remain true to what’s in my heart, that’s all the success I need.”

— Steve Vai

8. “The cool thing about playing is that the more you do it, the better you get.”

— Steve Vai

9. “The guitar is the coolest instrument in the world.”

— Steve Vai

10. “I’m always pursuing knowledge; I’m a seeker of spiritual equilibrium – and music is a big part of that.”

— Steve Vai

11. “Play slow and perfect – that’s the way to becoming a virtuoso.”

— Steve Vai

12. “Possessing a healthy imagination is a necessary ingredient for creativity.”

— Steve Vai

13. “If you want to play something that you can’t, you need to see and hear yourself doing it in your minds eye. It will start to happen.”

— Steve Vai

14. “Make an exercise out of everything you can’t do.”

— Steve Vai

15. “I awake, I meditate, get the kids off to school, go to the gym, go to the Favored Nations office, and usually at around 1 pm I’m home and do music the rest of the day.”

— Steve Vai

16. “The older I get, the more I just like plugging directly into my amp. I’m tired of trying to impress myself with weird sounds. It’s about the notes more.”

— Steve Vai

17. “The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It’s just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you’re using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.”

— Steve Vai

18. “Besides being a guitar player, I’m a big fan of the guitar. I love that damn instrument.”

— Steve Vai

19. “I’ve always considered transcribing to be an invaluable tool in the development of one’s musical ear and, over the years, I have spent countless glorious hours transcribing different kinds of music, either guitar-oriented or not.”

— Steve Vai

20. “I loved the guitar, and I had all of this music in my head. My passion for the guitar and the ideas for what I could create musically were equal. So that’s where I was.”

— Steve Vai

21. “I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it – it’s called the Jem – it’s 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do.”

— Steve Vai

22. “The only time I’m miserable is when I can’t keep an instrument in tune.”

— Steve Vai

23. “When I was a teenager in the ’70s, I was really into those great bands like Led Zeppelin and Queen and Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper.”

— Steve Vai

24. “I knew that I was going to have a life as a musician, because I always felt the pull. I don’t remember ever having to make a choice.”

— Steve Vai

25. “I could never overstate the importance of a musician’s need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good ‘inner ear’ – the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening – is the most important element in becoming a good musician.”

— Steve Vai

26. “Along with its enchanting and exquisite melodies, West Side Story has attitude and a tremendous amount of frenetic energy. It’s emotional, theatrical and technical. It’s everything.”

— Steve Vai

27. “A good solo is like a book. It will start out in a phrase, it will go on in paragraphs, and then it will have a great ending.”

— Steve Vai

28. “When you get down to it, the way that the music affects you individually is the most important thing, and when you let things like the location of a band get in the way or have an effect on your overview, you’re cheating yourself out of a really good time.”

— Steve Vai

29. “Criticism can be devastating. When push comes to shove, we are all very sensitive.”

— Steve Vai

30. “I have a deep love for life and my fellow human beings. I try to understand everything that everybody does, even if it seems wrong to me.”

— Steve Vai

31. “As a musician, I look for certain things that stimulate me. And what I look for is something that’s an evolution on a particular genre that I never heard before.”

— Steve Vai

32. “What I look for in music is artistry, sincerity, and simplicity, and Tom Waits has all of that. I want to make a connection to the creator.”

— Steve Vai

33. “It’s very hard to come across as a passionate human being in print. People can’t hear the inflections in your voice.”

— Steve Vai

34. “The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there’s times when you should play and there’s times when you gotta hold back. It’s an extremely dynamic instrument.”

— Steve Vai

35. “I was always one of those guys who was a seeker after truth. I want to know what’s going on.”

— Steve Vai

36. “Critisism is just reflection of the person that speaking.”

— Steve Vai

37. “You know, there’s times when you should play and there’s times when you gotta hold back.”

— Steve Vai

38. “A lot of those little things that I really like doing are just moments of cool articulation, just little moments of phrasing that probably go over everybody’s head.”

— Steve Vai

39. “Baby don’t wake me, let me take you on an endless journey. We touch and the softest kiss explodes with lust. It’s real and you can’t deny the heat you feel. And if I die before I wake, baby that’s all right.”

— Steve Vai

40. “Still to this day, I am deeply satisfied when watching a guitar player who is connected with their art and instrument. GuitarTV helps you tap into that connection, and to each other.”

— Steve Vai

41. “Lenny Breau was a genius – inspired and really loose. I loved how he used the guitar as an extension of his inner freedom, because, obviously, on the outside there were a lot of trainwrecks going on. But when you listen to him play, you hear what kind of guy he really is.”

— Steve Vai

42. “If you want to be a virtuoso then you have to set your sights above me. You have to go beyond what I’m doing. And that’s for you to figure out. Because if you can do that, then I’m going to be trying to go beyond you.”

— Steve Vai

43. “Jeff Beck is compelled by his inner artistic drive to keep evolving the instrument. He’ll use the whammy bar with the volume knob and the tone control all at the same time – creating harmonics that no human being should be able to hit.”

— Steve Vai

44. “It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention.”

— Steve Vai

45. “You can never deny the immense talent, rock credibility and iconic historical contribution that Van Halen made.”

— Steve Vai

46. “When I was young, I wasn’t a misfit or anything. I had friends in all the different social groups. But I had issues – just personal issues, insecurities and other things that had happened in my life.”

— Steve Vai

47. “It’s hilarious, because my guitar has what’s known as a tremolo bar or a whammy bar. And the whammy bar is probably the most alien thing on my guitar that could possibly relate to a classical guitar.”

— Steve Vai

48. “If you’re feeling emotional when you’re creating something, it’ll sound that way.”

— Steve Vai

49. “I’m a big fan of cultural music, and that’s how I try to expand my playing, by listening to music that is not conventionally American.”

— Steve Vai

50. “Reps once took chances on art, History’s most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals.”

— Steve Vai