Les Paul

It’s not technique — it’s what you have to say.

I gave up the guitar in 1965. Didn’t want to see a guitar. I’d go out and get drunk. When I came out of the heart surgery, the doc said, “Promise me you’ll work hard.” I said, “I thought working hard is what got me here.” He said, “No, working is what will keep you alive.”

You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be playing.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

This guitar is such a pal. It’s a psychiatrist. It’s a doggone bartender. It’s a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I’ve got a problem, I’ll go pick my guitar up and play. It’s the greatest pal in the whole world.

Every setback might be the very thing that makes you carry on and fight all the harder and become much better.

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now isn’t it?

Jazz music is a special skill that has brought pleasure to millions throughout the world.

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.

It’s always Jazz. You can put a new dress on her, a new hat, but no matter what kind of clothes she’s the same old broad.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.

If I’m not a jazz player all the time, I’ve at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

I can play all I know in eight bars.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

This be an empty world without the blues.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind’s attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art.