Les Paul Quotes

Every setback might be the very thing that makes you carry on and fight all the harder and become much better.

If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.

When you just get mixed up & there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist – whatever.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

I don’t know of a guitar player that has only one guitar. They’re never happy with one. I’m never happy with just one of them. I woke up and ended up with six, even if you can only play one at a time!

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.