Robert Fripp

Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.

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

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

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.

I have always seen Jazz as innovative.

I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.

I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn’t making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don’t understand the part of money in running a band.

It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.

Music opens up minds to dream great dreams about where you can go and what you can do.

There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little beyond my reach and that just sort of keeps me going.

All the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.

Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity and personal identity.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.