Alex Lifeson Quotes

I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

When I have a chunk of time that I can really dedicate to music, I really want to get into it. I want to do some really hard stuff and push myself.

What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don't, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth.

'Cause I felt I didn't have anything else to prove as a musician... and boy was I wrong about that one.

The more I come to understand music, the more I feel like a numbskull because there is always more to learn. The more I do it, the more I'm humbled. I'm just always trying to get better at it. I pick up a few tricks along the way.

People think that when they're playing it safe, they're trying to preserve what they have, but there is no preservation of what you have in music. There's no safety in music.

I hope that I can make good music out of whatever genre I go into. Just to prove to myself that I can.

I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.

I try to put myself into unusual and difficult situations as often as I can in order to capture the element of struggle in the music.

It doesn't really change, actually. I think The Rolling Stones have gotten a lot better. An awful lot better, I think. A lot of people don't, but I think they have, and to me that's gratifying. It's worth it.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.

Pushing yourself and digging into something new, that's what being a musician is all about.

My playground as a musician is growing.

As long as I'm still growing as a musician, it keeps me inspired.

I wouldn't be one-third of the player I am today if it wasn't for Avenged. They're an inspiring group of guys, and I'm constantly challenged to write things beyond my ability and then figure out how to play them.

We always want to do covers, but we found it kind of boring to do covers of bands in our genre, and we were always asked to do those.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.

I feel like that I'm learning all the time. I'm learning from new artists, from established artists... every time I listen to '70s rock 'n' roll records, I'm learning. And I think that I'm just now starting to get a hold on what I do.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

You've got to put interesting people around you; you've got to work with people who are gonna inspire you to take the songs you've written into a completely different direction, because there's nothing more boring than going to the studio and predictably knowing what is going to happen.

I feed on other people's creativity, photographers, artists of every kind. Sometimes a feeling that you get listening to a song can be so powerful. I've wanted to write whole scripts around what I felt just listening to a piece of music. I think music is important, and surrounding your visual field with stimulating things.