Pete Townshend quotes

The day you open your mind to music, you're halfway to opening your mind to life.
-- Pete Townshend

#Music #Mind #Opening

Respect yourself. Try to remember that not everything in life can be perfect. You will make mistakes. That's inevitable. But you are not ugly. You will only be ugly when you behave in an ugly way.
-- Pete Townshend

#Mistake #Perfect #Trying

I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.
-- Pete Townshend

#Hearing #Trouble #Deaf

I believe rock can do anything, it's the ultimate vehicle for everything
-- Pete Townshend

#Believe #Rocks #Vehicle

Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play.
-- Pete Townshend

#Song #Jesus #Play

Keith Moon, God rest his soul, once drove his car through the glass doors of a hotel, driving all the way up to the reception desk, got out and asked for the key to his room.
-- Pete Townshend

#Moon #Glasses #Doors

I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman. And I won't be classified as just a man.
-- Pete Townshend

#Men #Feels

The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds.
-- Pete Townshend

#Pounds #Cost #Equipment

Keith Moon is not interested in Jazz and won't ever be a Jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.
-- Pete Townshend

#Moon #Keith #Jazz

I played the guitar for ten years before I realized it wasn't a weapon.
-- Pete Townshend

#Guitar #Years #Weapons

Deep inside of every human being is this feeling that nothing is ever going to be complete, that the circle will never connect - and that itself is the secret to infinity.
-- Pete Townshend

#Frustration #Circles #Feelings

Rock music is important to people , because it allows them to escape this crazy world. It allows them not to run away from the problems that are there, but to face up to them , but at the same time sort of DANCE ALL OVER THEM. That's what rock and roll is about.
-- Pete Townshend

#Running #Crazy #Rocks

When I grew up, what was interesting for me was that music was color and life was gray. So music for me has always been more than entertainment.
-- Pete Townshend

#Color #Interesting #Entertainment

Rock 'n' Roll might not solve your problems, but it does let you dance all over them
-- Pete Townshend

#Rocks #Inspirational Music #Might

Enjoy life. And be careful what you pray for - remember, you will get it all.
-- Pete Townshend

#Enjoy Life #Praying #Remember

What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story.
-- Pete Townshend

#Order #People #Theatre

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'
-- Pete Townshend

#Rock And Roll #Mirrors #Rocks

It's the singer not the song that makes the music move along.
-- Pete Townshend

#Music #Song #Moving

Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.
-- Pete Townshend

#Wind #Events #Curls

The circling horse was an oblique warning that i would repeat the same mistake eternally. Would the law of averages allow it? Can anything continue without change? Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.
-- Pete Townshend

#Horse #Mistake #Average

It's the most psychedelic experience I ever had, going to see Hendrix play. When he started to play, something changed: colors changed, everything changed.
-- Pete Townshend

#Color #Play #Culture

People try to put us down (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Hope I die before I get old.
-- Pete Townshend

#People #Trying #Looks

Entertainment came out of this thing called a television, and it was gray. Most of the films that we saw at the cinema were black and white. It was a gray world. And music somehow was in color.
-- Pete Townshend

#Black And White #Color #Television

I have to say that anger is the blanket that comes around me, and that blunts and blurs my sense of proportion.
-- Pete Townshend

#Anger #Proportion #Blur

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around
-- Pete Townshend

#Drinking #Way #Would Be

All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.
-- Pete Townshend

#Art #Denial #Way

Your love is like heroin.
-- Pete Townshend

#Love Is #Love Is Like #Heroin

The music we play has to be tomorrow's, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.
-- Pete Townshend

#Yesterday #Play #Today

Rumors went round that I might be gay. In some ways, I was happy w/ this. Larry Rivers proved to me that a gay man could be wild, attractive, and courageous; in any case one's sexuality was becoming less of an issue every day. One of the great things about the British Mod movement was that being macho was no longer the only measure of manhood.
-- Pete Townshend

#Gay #Men #Rivers

Dance is the only thing that lets you lose yourself and find yourself at the same time.
-- Pete Townshend

#Dancing #Finding Yourself #Losing Yourself

Is your perception of 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' so shallow that it's violated by dancing raisins?
-- Pete Townshend

#Dancing #Perception #Shallow

There's no easy way to be free.
-- Pete Townshend

#Way #Easy #Easy Way

Young and old will sit and judge unfeeling, while the empty churches' bells are pealing. And the green hills lay ignored, untended, lonely watchers remain unbefriended.
-- Pete Townshend

#Lonely #Judging #Poetry

Parade your pallor in iniquity.
-- Pete Townshend

#Parades #Explanation

Man makes machines to man the machines that make the machines.
-- Pete Townshend

#Men #Machines #Explanation

We won't get fooled again!
-- Pete Townshend

#Activism #Fooled

I only really started to go to plays and to be interested in drama 20 years ago when as an artist I was already well-rounded. I think I'm more disciplined today.
-- Pete Townshend

#Drama #Thinking #Artist

The facts don't always reveal the truth, but the truth always reveals the facts.
-- Pete Townshend

#Facts #Adages

Prayer TV looks like pay TV to me.
-- Pete Townshend

#Religious #Prayer #Religion

Give blood, but you may find that blood is not enough.
-- Pete Townshend

#Blood #Giving #May

I want to get inside your bitter mind and see what I can find.
-- Pete Townshend

#Revenge #Mind #Want

Everything that has befallen you happened simply cause it crossed your mind.
-- Pete Townshend

#Philosophy #Mind #Causes

I am an animal, my teeth are sharp and my mouth is full, and the passion is strong.
-- Pete Townshend

#Strong #Philosophy #Passion

Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties.
-- Pete Townshend

#Father #Guitar #Style