Carlos Santana Quotes

You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.

When you fly to New York, sometimes they put you on hold and you just go round and around in a holding pattern. Sometimes in a concert, I feel other spirits in a holding pattern that they want to land through my heart and through my fingers.

There’s a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody.

The more choices we give patients affected by depression, the better we will serve them.

The best part of touring, still, is touching people’s hearts and igniting my band and igniting the people into what you call a spiritual revelation is sound and emotion.

Stay in your heart.

No one’s better than me. I’m not better than anyone. Whether it’s Eric Clapton or BB King we look straight at each other. And that keeps it real.

KISS is Las Vegas entertainment. A musician doesn’t need the mask.

I’m ready to do something with Lady Gaga or Andrea Bocelli. I’m really grateful that nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

I know I’m not the kind of person who’s gonna wind up a walking jukebox, like many rock ‘n’ roll artists. They just play their hits and that’s it. That doesn’t appeal to me.

I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that’s okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can’t ever rest on your laurels.

I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It’s not like I’m cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.

Every day you wake up is an opportunity to go beyond, and that ‘s why I let my band go right now. For the first time in my life I’m just roaming around, vagabonding.

Ever since I was a child I’ve always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there’s always a melody in there.

A lot of people said to me, ‘Enough with the guest vocalists for a while. We want to hear the Mexican play the guitar!’

Your mind is a magnet. You don’t attract what you need or what you want; you attract who you are. And I love who I am!