Robert Fripp Quotes

A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable, and never acceptable.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Creative work is serious play.

It is difficult to exaggerate the power of habit.

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

Music so wishes to be heard that sometimes it calls on unlikely characters to give it voice, and ears. This wishing-to-be heard calls into existence the Performance Event; where music, musician and audience may come together as one, in communion. This communion has six different forms of being and experiencing itself (plus an invisible seventh); and these forms, or principles, are simultaneously present within the Performance.

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

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

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

With a note of music, one strikes the fundamental, and, in addition to the root note, other notes are generated: these are called the harmonic series...As one fundamental note contains within it other notes in the octave, two fundamentals produce a remarkable array of harmonics, and the number of possible combinations between all the notes increases phenomenally. With a triad, affairs stand a good chance of getting severely out of hand...

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