Les Paul Quotes

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

Les Paul

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

Les Paul

#3. One minute we're over here, the next minute we're doing something completely different. But it's interesting because you are producing so many things you couldn't do with analog.

Les Paul

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

Les Paul

#5. It's not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

Les Paul

#6. This guitar is such a pal. It's a psychiatrist. It's a doggone bartender. It's a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I've got a problem, I'll go pick my guitar up and play. It's the greatest pal in the whole world.

Les Paul

#7. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a guitar player, and my job is to go out there and play and entertain and do my thing.

Les Paul

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

Les Paul

#9. You can't go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

Les Paul

#10. No, working is what will keep you alive.

Les Paul

#11. You learn fast from others how to be an entertainer as well as a musician; you don't necessarily have to get out there and just play - you can be an entertainer, too.

Les Paul

#12. 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.

Les Paul

#13. My chops were not as fast ... [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it's the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes

Les Paul

#14. Wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else

Les Paul

#15. I used my mother's radio as a PA system. I'd take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

Les Paul

#16. There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can't go there.

Les Paul

#17. We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.

Les Paul

#18. 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.

Les Paul

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

Les Paul

#20. If you're in the U.S. and talk to someone on the phone who's in Iraq, you'll experience sound delay. It isn't long, but the sound has to go to a satellite and back, it's used for everything. I'm proud to have that be something I invented.

Les Paul

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

Les Paul

#22. The guitar is just a wonderful instrument. It's everything: a bartender, a psychiatrist, a housewife. It's everything, but it's elusive

Les Paul

#23. A guitar is something you can hold and love and it's never going to bug you. But here's the secret about the guitar - it's defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

Les Paul

#24. 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!

Les Paul

#25. 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.

Les Paul

#26. I have younger friends who don't work, and they aren't doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working.

Les Paul

#27. I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.

Les Paul