Curt Smith Quotes

Music is all about wanting to be better at 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.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

I guess to just keep playing music; to just keep outdoing the last record.

My only ambition is to grow as a musician.

You have to grow with the music.

I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.

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.

I can see that if this was an album done 10 or 15 years ago we could see we were moving on to some place else.

I was for a minor amount of time but I was probably a better pianist at 15 than I am now.

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

When Kenny first came to me, I think he was thinking of making a nice little folk record, but in my opinion, folk music had come to an end and I felt he needed to go to the next step, the next generation.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.

Part of being in a band is getting better.

As my guitar playing dwindled, something else in my music got better.

There's no musician who just wakes up one day and decides, 'This is what I want to do.' It takes some development.

How do we keep it up? Because that's what we do; we're musicians, and we love to play and make music. And with every album, we get better, and with every tour, we get better.

I love music - really a lot. That's why I do it. But mine just never makes it, to me. There's always something wrong with it, something I want to change. But I like that, because at least it keeps me looking, trying to find ways I can improve, which obviously are a lot.

Music needs to move forward.

When I started to make music I wasn't as serious at first.

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.

On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

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