Robert Fripp famous quotes

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.
-- Robert Fripp

#Silence #Sound #Quiet

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

#Music #Audience

We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.
-- Robert Fripp

A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.
-- Robert Fripp

#Forgiveness #Mistake

Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.
-- Robert Fripp

#Simple #Knowing #Understanding

In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.
-- Robert Fripp

#Love Is #Creative #Despair

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.
-- Robert Fripp

#Music #Wine #Silence

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

#Musical #Facts #Language

What has changed in 40 years? It’s very simple: 40 years ago there was a market economy. Today there is a market society – today everything, including ethics, has a price.
-- Robert Fripp

#Simple #Years #Today

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

#Inspirational #Mistake

The only reward the musician receives is music: The privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes unto its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes unreal.
-- Robert Fripp

#Rewards #Privilege #Musician

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

#Wine #Broken #Silence

Music never goes away. It is always available, but we're not always available for music.
-- Robert Fripp

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

#Mean #Discipline #Ends

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

#Character #Voice #Giving

The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world. How we think of our world governs how we interpret our world. How we interpret our world directs how we participate in the world. How we participate in the world shapes the world.
-- Robert Fripp

#Thinking #Our World #Shapes

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

#Mean #Creating #States

Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence.
-- Robert Fripp

#Music #Wine #Silence

So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.
-- Robert Fripp

#Different #Orchestra #Railway Station

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.
-- Robert Fripp

#Everyday #Musician #Timing

Now, if King Crimson accepts responsibility for innovating its own tradition, you can't accept responsibility for the audience. And there is an enormous tangible weight of expectation, which comes from an audience attending a King Crimson concert.
-- Robert Fripp

#Kings #Responsibility #Expectations

If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
-- Robert Fripp

#Sleep #Play #Symphony

What we hear is the quality of our listening.
-- Robert Fripp

#Music #Listening #Quality

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

#Exercise #Musician #Futility

Beginner's luck is great for beginners.
-- Robert Fripp

#Luck #Beginners

That certain feeling happened to me in a big way quite often with the first King Crimson. Amazing things would happen-I mean, telepathy, qualities of energy, things that I had never experienced before with music. You can't tell whether the music is playing the musician or the musician is playing the music.
-- Robert Fripp

#Kings #Mean #Feelings

Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.
-- Robert Fripp

#Philosophical #Views #Profound

Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.
-- Robert Fripp

#Kings #Names #Definitions

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

#Interviews

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.
-- Robert Fripp

#Giving Up #Careers #Choices

I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, 'If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.'
-- Robert Fripp

#Students #Music Love #Hoover

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

#Quality #Firsts #Innocence

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

#Kings #Play #Crimson

The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.
-- Robert Fripp

#Art #Knowing

Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.
-- Robert Fripp

#Musical #Logic

I would like, with the sun shining through the window on a crisp early-autumnal mid-morning, with a sufficiency of Monster Cappucino flowing in my veins to prompt minimal sentience, to declare my view for the record that Drummer Jokes are a cruel and pernicious form of humour introduced to the world by under-humoured persons lacking in sensitivity and concern for other drummers.
-- Robert Fripp

#Morning #Views #Shining

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

#Music Is

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

#Stuck #Materials

Use your ears to record and your eyes to video.
-- Robert Fripp

#Eye #Records #Ears

The creative musician ... is ... the radio receiver, not the broadcasting station. His personal discipline is to improve the quality of the components, the transistors, the speakers, the alloys in the receiver itself, but never to concern himself overmuch with putting out the program. The program is there; all he has to do is receive it as far as possible.
-- Robert Fripp

#Discipline #Creative #Quality

To me, art is the capacity to experience one's innocence: craft is how you get to that point. Maturity in a musician would be the point at which one is innocent at will. At that point the relationship between music and the musician is direct and reliable. The relationship with music is always mysterious: when it works, you can never tell. You can never guarantee when it's going to work. You can only to put yourself in a place where it's more likely to happen.
-- Robert Fripp

#Art #Maturity #Musician

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

#Heart #Musical #Bills

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

#Want #Unnecessary #Unlikely

The aim is freedom conscience and truth
-- Robert Fripp

#Aim #Conscience

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

#Men #Average #Usa

However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.
-- Robert Fripp

#Views #World #Sophisticated

In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it.
-- Robert Fripp

#Mean #Names #Individuality

But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.
-- Robert Fripp

#Training #Adults #Attention

If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no.
-- Robert Fripp

#Quality #World #Doe

And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.
-- Robert Fripp

#Pulse #Band #Common

Purely by hard work, one can become an artist.
-- Robert Fripp

#Hard Work #Artist

Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.
-- Robert Fripp

#Doors #Expectations #Moments

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

#Coffee #Book #Party