Robert Fripp quotes

Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer, and producer, best known as the founder of the progressive rock band King Crimson. His innovative guitar techniques and experimental approach have influenced generations of musicians. He continues to collaborate widely and push the boundaries of modern music. Here are 45 of his quotes:

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

Robert Fripp

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

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

Robert Fripp

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

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

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

Robert Fripp

Creative work is serious play.

Robert Fripp

We begin with the possible, and move gradually towards the impossible.

Robert Fripp

It is difficult to exaggerate the power of habit.

Robert Fripp

If we don't know where we're going, we'll probably get there; if where we are going is how we get there, we are already where we are going.

Robert Fripp

Act with courtesy - Otherwise, be polite, but always be kind.

Robert Fripp

There is no such thing as making a mistake. Only one thing is compulsory, only one mistake: and that is not realizing your mistakes.

Robert Fripp

You see, the thing is, I've been in jams like this. The feeling is totally there among the musicians (and whoever else happens to be sitting around, whether they've paid for it or not, probably, and preferably, not). You are close to silence, Silence with a capital S. You are in tune with silence, the deepest sound of them all. Every sound, therefore, that you make, make with intention, sensitivity, and awareness, has a meaning, an ineffability, a significance. You are listening, Listening with a capital L. You hear what everyone else is doing; you do whatever is necessary, which is usually as little as possible. It has nothing to do with self-expression: it has to do with a group mind.

Robert Fripp

Normality is what we might achieve, given who we are, what we are, the conditions and limitations of the world we work within.

Robert Fripp

The musician is as rich as the music they give away.

Robert Fripp

A principle is universal, a rule is inflexible, a law is invariable.

Robert Fripp

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

Robert Fripp

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

Robert Fripp

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

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

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?

Robert Fripp

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