Top 35 Stevie Ray Vaughan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Your sound is in your hands as much as anything. It’s the way you pick, and the way you hold the guitar, more than it is the amp or the guitar you use.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

Featured in: Music Quotes, Guitar Quotes

2. “I don’t play with a lot of finesse. I usually play like I’m breaking out of jail!”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

3. “I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That’s technical talk.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

4. “While I was sleeping, I had a beautiful dream that all the people of the world got together on the same wavelength and began helping each other.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

5. “That’s how it happens, livin life by the drop.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

6. “Looking back in front of me, in the mirror a grin. Through eyes of love I see, I’m only looking at a friend.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

7. “Music really is a way to reach out and hold on to each other in a healthy way.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

8. “When I play from my mind I get in trouble.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

9. “The way people come into your life when you need them, it’s wonderful and it happens in so many ways. It’s like having an angel. Somebody comes along and helps you get right.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

10. “Some of us can be examples about going ahead and growing, and some of us, unfortunately, don’t make it there, and end up being examples because they had to die. I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn’t death.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

11. “You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other; our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That is to help each other and not hurt each other.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

12. “I actually wanted to be a drummer, but I didn’t have any drums.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

13. “What I am trying to get across to you; is please take of yourselves and those that you love; because that is what we are hear for, that’s all we got, and that is all we can take with us. Are you with me?”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

14. “I was taught to think the next week or month or year will only get better than it is today. So I just keep waiting to see how great it will get!”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

15. “My baby she’s a long and lean, you mess with her you see a man get mean.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

16. “God it’s good to be here walkin together, my friend.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

17. “I mainly use Stratocasters. I like a lot of different kinds of guitars, but for what I do, it seems that a Stratocaster is the most versatile. I can pretty much get any sound out of it, and I use stock pickups.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

18. “I love my baby like the finest wine, I’ll stick with her until the end of time.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

19. “I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn’t death.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

20. “Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I’m alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

21. “I’ve put my life back together, but it’s all a growing process and that’s neat, too, because if you stop growing, what good is it musically? So that is what I am looking forward to – growing. In some ways, I felt stagnant in my life and it showed.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

22. “The way I play, I go through a set in a year. So I put ’58 Gibson Jumbo Bass frets on all my necks.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

23. “I’ve been trying to grow up some myself, in my heart, and it’s happening quick and I feel good about it, and I want that to come out in the music.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

24. “I got a lot of paradoxes in my life. I guess I’m a real confused person, but there are some focused parts to my life now, and I’m slowly trying to put all the pieces back together.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

25. “I play as many different things – piano, sax and harp parts – as I can at once. Whatever I can fit, whenever I need to.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

26. “So, my big brother was playing guitar and I figured I’d try it too.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

27. “It is the human things that make life good, the unexpected kindness, the friendly note, the bracing word, the neighbour’s extra loaf of bread she leaves at our back door.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

28. “After I changed the string we picked up right where we left off – and punched back in at the same time. I don’t know if this has ever been done before. The engineer sort of looked at us weird, but we got it on the first take.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

29. “The whole deal is when you walk onstage, you’re up there bigger than life. People idolize you.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

30. “If you hit the front end on the right-hand side you could turn that one on by itself and if you hit on the left-hand side you could turn it on and off. And in the middle it was like serious overdrive.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

31. “Even though there’s reasons to try things that may or may not work, it’s still a real intimate way to finish the song with everybody right there in the band just locked in.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

32. “Lots of times I’ll play lead and rhythm together.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

33. “Jazz changes and all. But I don’t know the names of what it is I’m doing.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

34. “But between sets I’d sneak over to the black places to hear blues musicians. It got to the point where I was making my living at white clubs and having my fun at the other places.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

35. “All the Strats have personalities of their own and feel completely different.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

36. “To be honest with you, I’m not sure what a pop tune is. I’m sure if I hear it on the radio, I’d say that’s pop or this or that. But, really, what I pay attention to the most is just music that moves me. It’s all at least a root-type music instead of a formula.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

37. “The problem with taking amps to a shop is that they come back sounding like another amp.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

38. “I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan

39. “You know, there’s a big lie in this business. The lie is that it’s okay to go out in flames. But that doesn’t do anybody much good. I may be wrong, but I think Hendrix was trying to come around.”

— Stevie Ray Vaughan