Robert Fripp

Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.

If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

You gotta mean it and you gotta treat it gentle.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

From hard rhythms of Be-bop, the mellow harmonies of Cool, to atonal forays of Free and the Straight Ahead delivery of Modern, it’s all Jazz.

I am very aware that so little has happened to the electric guitar from the time that it was conceived to now; where there are so little changes made where there should be drastic changes made. If we were to put our heads together and start thinking about modern technology we would be much more advantaged with the electric guitar than we are. I think that we’ve been stagnant for many years.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.

Just ’cause I’ve forgotten more than I can play, doesn’t mean it’s not Improv.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.