Top 105 Quotes & Sayings by Sixto Rodriguez

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Sixto Rodriguez.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, known professionally as Rodriguez, is an American singer-songwriter from Detroit, Michigan. Though his career was initially met with little fanfare in the United States, he found success in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Unbeknownst to him for decades, his music was extremely successful and influential in South Africa, where he is believed to have sold more records than Elvis Presley, as well as other countries in Southern Africa. Information about him was scarce, and it was incorrectly rumored there that he had committed suicide shortly after releasing his second album.

American - Musician | Born: July 10, 1942

Source: Wikipedia

All my life, I never gave up on music and though there was a lot of disappointment for some that the commercial thing never happened, it has never been a disappointment for me.

Sixto Rodriguez

I did a lot of heavy-lifting - construction, demolition, that kind of thing. Dusty, dirty work.

Sixto Rodriguez

My family, we're indigenous people from San Luis Potosi in Central Mexico. My father moved to Detroit and brought all of us because the automobile companies were paying great wages.

Sixto Rodriguez

My dad, he was my role model - my mom died when I was three - and the way we honor our parents is remembering their heritage.

Sixto Rodriguez

I loved Jimmy Reed, the chord changes, the lyrics.

Sixto Rodriguez

The film, 'Searching For Sugar Man,' has excited my music career.

Sixto Rodriguez

Music is a living art. You re-create it.

Sixto Rodriguez

There's no shame in hard work.

Sixto Rodriguez

I just want to be treated like an ordinary legend.

Sixto Rodriguez

I wasn't very successful at running for office.

Sixto Rodriguez

I have a sloppy style of playing guitar. A percussive style. Unique in fact.

Sixto Rodriguez

I think that many of the issues they were facing in South Africa were the same as those I was singing about. Conscription, resisting the draft, government repression - I mentioned all those things in my songs.

Sixto Rodriguez

I stopped chasing the music dream back in '74.

Sixto Rodriguez

I renovate homes and buildings and residences in Detroit.

Sixto Rodriguez

Musicians want to be heard. So I'm not hiding. But I do like to leave it there onstage and be myself, in that sense. Because some people carry it with them.

Sixto Rodriguez

Rock 'n' roll is a crazy world, and it's how things work out you can't predict.

Sixto Rodriguez

I sing about social issues, not the boy-girl stuff.

Sixto Rodriguez

In Detroit there are a lot of houses they are going to demolish because no one is taking care of them.

Sixto Rodriguez

In the '60s and '70s, a protest song was a genre in music.

Sixto Rodriguez

That late success has happened is OK. I'm grounded. I use my seniority to my advantage. That's helped me out. Who'd have thought? So, yeah. I'm a lucky guy.

Sixto Rodriguez

I was ready for the world. I don't think the world was ready for me.

Sixto Rodriguez

Musicians do music for the girls. We do music for the money. We do music for the recognition, for the rock and roll history. But we also do it because it's fun.

Sixto Rodriguez

Many of us come into the world with a clenched fist, but we all leave with an open hand.

Sixto Rodriguez

I loved the Woody Guthrie tradition of speaking about what's happening to the country.

Sixto Rodriguez

You want to know the secret of life? It is to breathe in and out. And the mystery of life? You never know when it is going to end.

Sixto Rodriguez

I'm not getting old, I'm getting dead.

Sixto Rodriguez

Where other people live in an artificial world, I feel I live in the real world. And nothing beats reality.

Sixto Rodriguez

I like to say that I do covers of my own songs. And I have about a dozen bands all over the world. That's no exaggeration. I have a South African band, an Australian band, Swedish bands, English bands, American bands. They're all notable musicians, too.

Sixto Rodriguez

Whenever I speak, I talk to the collective consciousness of my audience.

Sixto Rodriguez

I play guitar and I'm always trying to find out the latest kinds of riffs.

Sixto Rodriguez

I'm a musical political, I tend to stick to what I see happening outside my front door.

Sixto Rodriguez

I play by ear - I'm self-taught. And so everything I do is through that technique.

Sixto Rodriguez

Beware of current truths.

Sixto Rodriguez

The social realism of ' Establishment Blues' or 'Like Janis,' are what I chose to use to express what was happening in the U.S. and what was happening to me personally.

Sixto Rodriguez

I'm Mexican, and we do a lot of singing, and it was my brother's guitar that I'd practice on, and he would say, 'Who's that playing my guitar?'

Sixto Rodriguez

It took me 10 years to get a four-year degree, but I graduated.

Sixto Rodriguez

I like people who can write and sing, and play an instrument.

Sixto Rodriguez

I don't much listen to music as I study it: who's doing what, who wrote it.

Sixto Rodriguez

I've been a candidate for office at least eight times. A couple times for mayor, state representative, city council.

Sixto Rodriguez

I have fun with words.

Sixto Rodriguez

Solomon was a musician and David was a musician, so it's a profession that I take seriously.

Sixto Rodriguez

I've been chasing music since I was 16.

Sixto Rodriguez

There are no guarantees in the music field. There's a lot of rejection, a lot of criticism and a lot of disappointment. You have to be prepared for that. And after 1973, it just wasn't happening for me.

Sixto Rodriguez

You either live under a rock or you walk in the sunshine. That's pretty much how it goes.

Sixto Rodriguez

I love my country. It's just the government I don't trust.

Sixto Rodriguez

You never throw away your work clothes. There is always something to do in the house.

Sixto Rodriguez

The earth is going to survive, it's the people that aren't.

Sixto Rodriguez

I'm a lucky man.

Sixto Rodriguez

I live below my means. I think that's a good discipline because you never can tell.

Sixto Rodriguez

There are beautiful songs people write about love and dancing. But it's political issues that should be addressed.

Sixto Rodriguez

My work is more to me than just music.

Sixto Rodriguez

Some want to do pretty songs with pretty words about pretty people, but that ain't me.

Sixto Rodriguez

I've had such an ordinary life.

Sixto Rodriguez

Was 'Crucify Your Mind' dedicated to anybody? No, it was a generalization. 'A Most Disgusting Song' is like that, too.

Sixto Rodriguez

I don't mind going out to do my shows but I can still retreat back into my own private world, you know? And that is very key.

Sixto Rodriguez

You see there's music and there's the music business - and they're different.

Sixto Rodriguez

Music is not a spectator sport, you have to be involved - fully involved - or you get left behind.

Sixto Rodriguez

Entertainment news doesn't interest me.

Sixto Rodriguez

You can't get around certain stuff, whether it's in Darfur or on your block at home. What makes us political is your home turf, your family, your life space. You walk down the street, and automatically a human being is territorial, and political happens in that.

Sixto Rodriguez

The Isley Brothers, there's a group that stays together because they're a family band.

Sixto Rodriguez

Top 105 Quotes & Sayings by Sixto Rodriguez

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