"I'm going to Winfield next week. I'm going to be surrounded by guys who can blows my doors off... but...they're not me" - during a lesson with mandolin great Don Stiernberg

"Playing fast is not a problem if your right hand is under control" - during a lesson with Randy Kohrs

"Yes, but not enough to hurt my playing" - Chet Atkins after being asked if he knew how to read music

"Music is your own experience...your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn" -- Charlie Parker

"I would, but I'm afraid it might affect the tone" - David Lindley after being offered a polishing cloth to clean the dust off his vintage Weissenborn during a gig at McCabes in Santa Monica, CA

"... I think people overemphasize the importance of gear in their search for tone. Your sound comes from how you pick and dampen the strings, and from your attack as much as anything..." - Eric Johnson

"Most beginners want to learn lead because they think it's cool .. consequently, they never really develop good rhythm skills .. since most of a rock guitarists time is spent playing rhythm, it's important to learn to do it well .. learning lead should come after you can play solid backup and have the sound of the chords in your head" - Eddie Van Halen

".. my instrumentals try to create some of the basic feelings of human interaction, like anger and joy and love ... with Jessica, I couldn't quite find it, then my little daughter, Jessica, crawled into the room, and I just started playing to her, that's why I named it after her ... I came up with that melody using just two fingers as a sort of tribute to Django ... in general writing a good instrumental is very fulfilling because you've transcended language and spoken to someone with a melody" - Dickey Betts / Allman Bros. Band / Great Southern

An error may be only an unintentional rightness...Do not get too fussy about how every part of the thing sounds. Go ahead. All processes are at first awkward and clumsy and "funny." Do not be afraid of being wrong; just be afraid of being uninteresting. --T. Carl Whitmer

Improvisation is the basis of learning to play a musical instrument. But what usually happens? You decide you want a certain instrument. You buy the instrument and then think to yourself, "I'll go and find a teacher, and who knows, in seven or eight years' time I might be able to play this thing." And in that way you miss a mass of important musical experience...a person's own investigation of an instrument--his exploration of it--is totally valid. --John Stevens

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards.
      - Joe Pass  

"I used to play bottleneck on Dobros and Nationals, but when I started playing lap slide, the Weissenborn was the logical next step. It is the greatest sounding acoustic instrument ever made. I play it for that reason. It has the depth of a cello and the edge of a Strat. You have to be as accurate as the cellist for the intonation. You can't play a little too high or too low or else you're out of tune. The hollow neck Weissenborn can't be fretted, and the strings are high off the neck. Since it doesn't have the metal resonator, it doesn't have that metallic tone. Its belly, back and side are entirely made of Koa wood, which is a wood only of the Hawaiian Islands. It is now an endangered wood, so you cannot cut the Koa tree. I'm drawn to its resonating sound. It is very expressive. I stick with the Weissenborn, it says something new to me everyday. Every time I pick it up it sings something new. The Weissenborn is the sound that is in me. Nothing else can channel the spirit of my music." - David Lindley

"I once asked Gatemouth Brown when you should start working on having your own style, and without batting an eye he said, “as soon as you’ve got the basics down.” Now, what it means to have “the basics down” is kind of open ended, and of course one really good way to learn is to figure out how the musicians you love are making the sounds you want to be able to make on the instrument. But how is only half of the equation; the other half is why. You can never own someone else’s why, you have to come up with your own. If you just learn to play like other people, you’ll always only have half the picture. What do you want to play? What do you think it should sound like? What’s your personality, and how is it going to come out on the instrument? Once you start to get a handle on that, you’ll have something all your own, and that’s the bedrock every musician ultimately needs to find." - David Hamburger

"What happens is you set out to emulate your heroes, and you will fail, because you can't be somebody else. But failing to be somebody else forces you to be yourself." - Peter Mulvey