You're in direct contact with the music by having the strings under your fingers. It's not mechanical like a piano.

I'll hear something in my head, then eventually play it. But it's a subconscious thing. Most of the time I really don't know what I'm playing.

My first joint I smoked onstage in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I smoked my first joint live.

When I'm with Purple, I'm totally with Purple; when I'm doing my thing, I'm totally doing my own thing.

I have my own style, but it's different for each kind of music. There are certain little characteristic things every player has.

I can't do anything but play guitar.

If you're not having fun it's not worth doing.

I came in with a completely new perspective. I would write songs and they would pick tunes they felt were in the Purple vein.

I don't like English bands. They're too structured.

When you come from the Midwest, you have a more open mind than if you come from the West Coast or the East Coast.

I think the way I play the guitar is very percussive. I play a lot of rhythm chops as though I were playing congas or something.

Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love chocolate, and communists.

With true light comes instruments of peace. It's best when such peace begins in an American home and spread out throughout the many homes, villages and societies in the world.

Everybody is born so that they can learn to live a good life-like loving everybody and being nice, right? Well animals already know how to do that, so they don't have to live so long

It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.

[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

I am not the same man you found that day! The monster you've created has returned, to kill you!

I write because the act of writing itself is what drives me. It's a private communication within myself - nothing more or less. This doesn't mean I do not want to share with people.

Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really?... True effectiveness requires balance.

I think before 1997 is over, NATO will have taken giant strides in what's called adaptation, the discussions about bringing the French fully into the NATO forces.