- [on news that The Rolling Stones had earned £1.23 billion since 1989] You don't start to play your guitar thinking you're going to be running an organisation that will maybe generate millions.
- [joking about the length of the Rolling Stones' career] You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe - and you have the Rolling Stones!
- [to then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg just before being arrested for possession of heroin and cocaine in Toronto 1977] See you in seven years.
- Cold turkey is not so bad after you've done it ten or twelve times.
- If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use both feet.
- [on the death of original Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones] Although it was a shock when it actually happened, nobody was really that surprised, you know. I'm sure everybody's got a feeling about certain people... everybody knows people that - you just have that feeling about them, they're not going to be 70 years old, ever. Not everybody makes it.
- Gram Parsons could get better coke than the mafia.
- The truth is, I'm more interested in the roll than I am in the rock.
- I never thought I was wasted, but I probably was.
- I'm a Sagittarius, half-man, half-horse with a license to shit in the street.
- [on Johnny Depp's visits to his home] It took me two years before I realized who he was. He was just one of my son Marlon's mates, hanging around the house playing guitar. I never ask Marlon's mates who they are because, you know, 'I'm a dope dealer'. Then one day I was at dinner and I'm like 'woah, Scissorhands.'
- If you say I'm great, thank you very much. But I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?
- [on painter/director Donald Cammell in his biography "Life"] I wrote "Gimme Shelter" on a stormy day, sitting in Robert Fraser's apartment in Mount Street. Anita [Anita Pallenberg] was shooting Performance (1970) at the time, not far away, but I ain't going down to the set. God knows what's happening. As a minor part of the plot, Spanish Tony was trying to steal the Beretta they were using as a prop off the set. But I didn't go down there, because I really didn't like Donald Cammell, the director, a twister and a manipulator whose only real love in life was *beep* other people up. I wanted to distance myself from the relationship between Anita and Donald. Donald was a decadent dependent of the Cammell shipyard family, very good-looking, a razor-sharp mind poisoned with vitriol. He'd been a painter in New York, but something drove him mad about other clever and talented people--he wanted to destroy them. He was the most destructive little turd I've ever met. Also a Svengali, utterly predatory, a very successful manipulator of women, and he must have fascinated many of them. He would sometimes take the piss out of Mick [Mick Jagger] for his Kentish accent and sometimes me, Dartford yokel. I don't mind a good put-down now and again; I come up with a few. But putting people down was almost an addiction for him. Everybody had to be put in their place. Anything you did in front of Cammell was up for his ridicule. He had a fairly developed sense of inferiority in there somewhere. (...) Donald Cammell was more interested in manipulation than actually directing. He got a hard-on about intimate betrayal, and that's what he was setting up in Performance, as much of it as he could engineer. (...) I met Cammell later in LA, and I said, you know, I can't think of anybody, Donald, that's ever got any joy out of you, and I don't know if you've ever got any joy out of yourself. There's nowhere else for you to go, there's nobody. The best thing you can do is take the gentleman's way out. And this was at least two or three years before he finally topped himself.
- The Beatles, those chicks wore those guys out. They stopped touring in 1966 - they were done already. They were ready to go to India and shit.
- [on Sergeant Pepper] The Beatles sounded great when they were The Beatles. But there's not a lot of roots in that music. I think they got carried away.
- [on Anita Pallenberg] Stupid bitch... I'll always love her.
- I would try to keep a few people alive who don't really have a chance. Love thy neighbor! I can't get any more Christian. Brotherly love is not such a bad thing, actually. And it would be nice to be able to live without fear.
- [on Mick Jagger's solo album "Goddess in the Doorway"] Dog shit in the Doorway.
- Puff Daddy is a piece of crap.
- How would you like a smack in the fuckin' mouth? You wanna learn to keep your *fucking* mouth shut or someone might put their fist in it.
- At the end of the Seventies, with the emergence of the punks, we were denigrated as boring old farts. But it was a good kick in the butt.
- [on the Spice Girls] Well, quite a fascinating phenomenon. They're really just a lot of tarts! Can they sing? No! Can they play? No! The world's gone mad, it needs something like them. But they won't stay very long.
- I'd hate to have to go around thinking of health & shit like that.
- [on punk rock] What's the point of listening to that shit? It's for mass-media consumption anyway.
- Nothing's ever perfect.
- I would tell the genie: Do something for the others. Help the Africans, help those who hate each other. Help them to overcome this hatred! I don't need anything. I got enough! Go and use my wish for the others.
- I cry quite often.
- I never had a problem with drugs, only with cops.
- Nobody's got the right to judge over what I am putting into my body, apart from myself.
- [speaking in later years] My life then basically was "Do I have the dope to start this day off? Can I make it until the next fix?" You think you're in this elite club. You could be wallowing in the gutter and think, "I'm elite." It was an adventurous experiment that went on too long.
- [on the death of Kurt Cobain] The kid couldn't cope.
- There's only one fatal disease, I've concluded. It's called hypchondria. And it is deadly.
- [Danny Markus: This is the last indoor gig and I hope it's going to be really good.] Tell that to the members of the band who are awake.
- I expected him to come in like this [changes his voice and raises his arm in a threatening gesture] "Where have you been, you little sod?" Instead, this little man comes in and says: "Hello, son, how are you?" It made my heart bleed. [on meeting his dad after 20 years]
- Charlie Watts is my absolute favourite. He has all of the qualities that I like in people. Great sense of humor, a lovely streak of eccentricity, a real talent, very modest.
- [a journalist tries to persuade Keith to give him an interview by saying he is the best journalist on the Northern Hemisphere] So what, I'm the best musician on the Northern Hemisphere.
- This morning, when I was listening to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", tears came to my eyes.
- Nobody starts off to play an instrument with the idea off making money. You learn the guitar because you have this burning desire.
- [on Elton John] The man seems to like singing songs about dead blondes.
- There's an excellent book I've quite often read called "Hashish", by a couple of French guys. Very interesting. It's an education in chemistry & folklore. I've done the Bible & the Koran a few times. Sometimes just for the prose, sometimes for the information. The Kamasutra I've been through a few times, come to think of it. (laughing) I've done the chandelier, and the revolving table with melon. I've done it all mate.
- [on hearing Elton John wants to throw a party for them] Only if he gives us a Rembrandt each.
- I'm very proud of the fact that I didn't go and kiss the Maharishi's damn feet, you know?
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