Robert Fripp Quotes

Beginner's luck is great for beginners.

Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.

Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.

Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence.

Performance is a vehicle for entering different worlds of experiencing.

What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.

Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.

The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.

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

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

My life has improved so much since I stopped doing interviews.

Use your ears to record and your eyes to video.

The perception of the audience is the interesting part. If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on or not?

Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.

Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end.

I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.

We begin where we are.

The aim is freedom conscience and truth

The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.

Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.

According to USA today, the average length of an attention span of a man in America is 23 minutes.

There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.

If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.

Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.

Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.

When music appears which only King Crimson can play, then, sooner or later, King Crimson appears to play the music.

Purely by hard work, one can become an artist.

The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.

Music never goes away. It is always available, but we are not always available to music.

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

I'd say that what we hear is the quality of our listening.

My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.

We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.

A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.