What would Keith Richards do_ - Jessica Pallington West [27]
And: “You can build a wall to stop people, but eventually, the music, it’ll cross that wall.”
“That which will kindle the lightning must for a long time be a cloud.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “The blues … it’s part of everybody … It can be dark down there, man.”
“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “In the business of crime there’s two people involved, and that’s the criminal and the cops. It’s in both their interests to keep crime a business, otherwise they’re both out of a job. So they’re gonna look for it. They ain’t gonna wait for it to happen.”
“I teach you the superman. Man is something to be surpassed.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “What would kill other people doesn’t kill me.”
“Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “There’s nothing wrong with the gun. It’s the people who are on the trigger. Guns are an inanimate object. A heroin needle’s an in- animate object. It’s what’s done with it that’s important.”
“If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “At our best, we master the art of going just over the edge of the abyss, then pulling back.”
“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “My music … is about chaos. It reflects my life, and probably everybody else’s.”
“What does not destroy me makes me stronger.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “I’m still here.”
“The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!”—Nietzsche
“Two great European narcotics—alcohol and Christianity.”—Nietzsche
Keith: “My biggest addiction, more than heroin, is the stage and the audience. That buzz—it calls you every time.”
If the history of all of philosophy is a matter of footnoting and expanding the meaning of a thought by adding to it, there’s something Keith in all the great philosophers.
A Sampling from Western
Philosophy, Illuminated by
Keith Richards, and an Assessment on
How to Be a Guru by Looking at the Keith Experience:
“The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things.”—Buddha
Keith: “Brains have probably screwed up enough things as it is, and rock ’n’ roll is better left to instinct, you know.”
“Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.”—Martin Luther
Keith: “All music is holy.”
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. ”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Keith: “I looked upon myself as a laboratory.”
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. ”
—Abraham Lincoln
Keith: “You uncover fragments of the past every time you think back. It’s like a broken mirror. And every now and again you get a glimpse of what happened.”
“The world was my oyster, but I used the wrong fork.”—Oscar Wilde
Keith: “Some people would say I’ve had it easy. I just made it hard for myself.”
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”—Carl Jung
Keith: “The only things Mick and I disagree about is the band, the music, and what we do … He’s my best friend and my worst enemy.”
“I thank God for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself. ”
—Helen Keller
Keith: “It kept me in touch with the street, at the lowest level.”
“Do not be inaccessible.”—Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Keith: “I’m up for anything … I’m fair game. … Ask anything.”
“Fame is like a river that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.”—Francis Bacon
Keith: “I fell into it. I’m still falling.”
“Hell is other people.”—Jean-Paul Sartre
Keith: “Chuck Berry …”
“When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.”—Mae West
Keith: “If I knew what the other original sin was, I would do it.”
“Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.”—Schopenhauer
Keith: “It’s like wine, man, they [blues musicians]