Mark Knopfler Quotes

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

When it's time to make music, that's about getting lost for me. To be a control freak is not half as good as being a freak who's casually in control. You're feeling around in the dark for something that feels good.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I play as I feel.

I love to improvise when it's appropriate and encouraged by a producer.

I honestly can't characterize my style in words. It seems that whatever comes to me naturally, I play.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

Music is extremely intuitive, which acting too in a different way.

I do read music, but I prefer playing from the heart.

I've found that as I've learned to improvise melodically, it seems like I can come up with a bigger variety of stuff. I kind of selfishly enjoy it more, because I'm in the moment so much.

Sound-wise, I'm really limitless in the way I write songs. Whatever comes out, comes out. Every song is completely different.

The fun for me musically is that you never quite know what works and why. So why pretend you do? Why not just put things together and discover, in the creative process, if and why they work? That approach has served me well.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

When I play guitar, it's automatic. I don't try to do something; I just do it. And it's already so ingrained in what I do, I don't think about it. I don't try to do something - I just do it. And the more I do it that way, the more I surprise myself. And if I surprise myself, that's the best thing.

I'd listen to a song and say, 'Hang on, I like that piano thing,' so I'd play the guitar like that and get the vibe from it, and it just evolved from the get-go. It was pretty obvious what to do; You don't think about rock n' roll: you just do it.

Whatever you see me do is spontaneous reactions on stage. It's nothing planned. It's nothing that I got in the room and tried to think of hard. It just happens through feeling.

Whenever I start to really think about what I'm playing, I may play it better musically, but the feeling isn't there.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.