Top 141 Quotes & Sayings by Pete Townshend - Page 2

Give love, and keep blood between brothers

Rock is very, very important and very, very ridiculous.

Enjoy life. And be careful what you pray for - remember, you will get it all.

Everything that has befallen you happened simply cause it crossed your mind.

If you don't want anyone to know anything about you, don't write anything.

It's the singer not the song that makes the music move along.

Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.

The music we play has to be tomorrow's, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.

The Who is now a brand, not a band; but it is a brand that is upheld by its audience, not an industry or a cynical moneymaking machine.

Rumors went round that I might be gay. In some ways, I was happy w/ this. Larry Rivers proved to me that a gay man could be wild, attractive, and courageous; in any case one's sexuality was becoming less of an issue every day. One of the great things about the British Mod movement was that being macho was no longer the only measure of manhood.

I smash guitars because I like them.

Young and old will sit and judge unfeeling, while the empty churches' bells are pealing. And the green hills lay ignored, untended, lonely watchers remain unbefriended.

It's terrible feeling like an eligible bachelor but no women seeming to agree with you.

Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired.

No one respects the flame quite like the fool who's badly burned

Dance is the only thing that lets you lose yourself and find yourself at the same time.

Can't pretend that growin' older never hurts.

We are musicians, entertainers. We can do it. We have the right tools. No worries.

I believe rock can do anything, it's the ultimate vehicle for everything

The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds.

It's the most psychedelic experience I ever had, going to see Hendrix play. When he started to play, something changed: colors changed, everything changed.

Poverty is not something people impose on themselves for want of effort and community organisation. It is constructed by divisive and discriminatory laws, inflexible organisations, acquisitive ideologies of wealth, a deeply rooted class system and policies which serve privilege in the short term and destroy society in the long term.

The facts don't always reveal the truth, but the truth always reveals the facts.

He is the king. If it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,' I would have never picked up a guitar.

There's no easy way to be free.

We've got to fool the fools, and plan the plans. We must rule the rules, got to stand the stands.

Give blood, but you may find that blood is not enough.

Although I was well past my teenage troubles, our music was specifically designed to lubricate the passage from adolescence to adulthood.

For an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. It's kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines.

I see a boy with his mother's ambition, performing for love, trained in submission.

I'll spend my mornings at the sunshine café.

What the English like to do is to face reality with a glass of port and a tear and fade off like Basil Rathbone into the sunset.

I want to get inside your bitter mind and see what I can find.

I don't need to fight / To prove I'm right / I don't need to be forgiven

The circling horse was an oblique warning that i would repeat the same mistake eternally. Would the law of averages allow it? Can anything continue without change? Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.

If it screams truth rather than help, if it commits itself with a courage that it can't be sure it really has, if it stands up and admits that something is wrong, but doesn't insist on blood, then it's rock n' roll.

Your love is like heroin.

If I were to have my own brand of guitars, they would have to be industructable.

Looking back, I don't know why we needed it to be quite so loud all the time.

Parade your pallor in iniquity.

I played the guitar for ten years before I realized it wasn't a weapon.

I want fast food, pretty naked girls preferably tattooed.

Even as age humbles me it feeds my arrogance. There is still nothing that interests me as much as myself.

Any fool can hide, few can play.

The fact of the matter is, I'm f**king brilliant. Not 'was' brilliant. 'Am' brilliant.

Let my love open the door To yourheart.

I respect those who follow religious routes only if they seem to me to be morally proper and in accord with the modern world.

People try to put us down (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Hope I die before I get old.

It makes me angry when people insist that I have a responsibility to do what they think I should do.

Link is a quiet man to meet- easy and courteous. His music, though, betrays that deep inside he gets very very mean very often. I remember being made very uneasy the first time I heard Rumble , and yet very excited by the guitar sound. And his voice! He sounds like a cross between Jagger and Van Morrison, even sometimes like Robbie Robertson. We met him in New York in 1970 while recording Who's Next.... this later inspired the b-side Wasp Man, a tune we dedicated to Link Wray.

Pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday / And I get on my knees and pray.

I'm an air-conditioned gypsy.

Deep inside of every human being is this feeling that nothing is ever going to be complete, that the circle will never connect - and that itself is the secret to infinity.

Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties.

We won't get fooled again!

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around

What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh...Songwriting is best. It's the hardest-finest-tightest. It also requires the most discipline.

Once she woke with untamed lover's face between her legs, now he's cooled and stifled and it's she who has to beg.

I am an animal, my teeth are sharp and my mouth is full, and the passion is strong.

In the midnight of a soul's unsleeping, hear the waterfall of women weeping. Hear the distant noise of traffic stalling, hear the prostituted children calling.