Kirk Hammett Quotes

My guitars are my umbilical cord. They're directly wired into my head.

The same sensations that you get in heavy metal are in horror movies. Heavy metal sounds evil and horror movies are evil, ha ha!

A life lived unexplored is a life not worth living.

Everyone has a side to them that's kind of unexplained and feels misunderstood.

I think it's morally wrong to keep someone away from what keeps him happy.

Just because you know umpteen billion scales, it doesn't mean you have to use them all in a solo.

If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.

Metallica is a very complicated, fragile thing. On the outside, it's all metal, but on the inside it's very delicate.

For me, one of the most perfect times to watch a horror movie is when it's cold and raining outside and there's pretty much no outdoor activity to be done. It kind of sets the mood.

Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it - St. Anger being the fire and Death Magnetic being the phoenix.

I've been into horror movies ever since I was five years old.

I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.

I think it goes without saying that a lot of big horror fans are just nerds and geeks.

I went through a whole blues period in the Nineties, and that had some influence on 'Load' and 'ReLoad.'

Guitar players in the nineties seem to be reacting against the technique oriented eighties.

I'm very fortunate to be doing the thing I do best, which is play guitar. There aren't many other things I could do.

Although I'm a lead guitarist, I'd say that a good 95 percent of my time onstage is spent playing rhythm.

I don't think success has changed us as people at all. We are the same lunatics that we were when this band first got going. We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.

I'm death obsessed. You know, I have death all over my house. I have a stuffed two headed sheep!

I'm not into that whole Satanic thing. It's just something to fall back on if you don't have much imagination. Singing you fiftieth song about having lunch with Satan--I'm not into it. It's silly.

The main riff for 'SandMan' was just something I wrote one night.

Much of my playing is rhythmic and choppy; I use a lot of double stops. The wah just accents all those stops and chops and brings out the rhythmic aspect that much more.

We wanted to offer something new to our audience. I hate it when bands stop taking chances.

I love this pedal to death. The only way you could keep me from playing one is by chopping off my legs!

Jeff Beck is one of my heroes and has been since I first picked up a guitar.

I love horror movies in space. I love it when the genre switches over and what was sci-fi becomes horror.

My musical tastes change every week.

We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.

One of my favorite horror films of the Nineties was 'Event Horizon.'

It's definitely true that Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my all-time favorite guitarists.

It really shocked me just to hear of the fans' response to 'St. Anger' not having guitar solos.

Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.

Getting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, 'Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies' has probably played out in a lot of people's discovery of horror.

I love 'True Blood.' I love 'The Walking Dead.' Those are fantastic series.

I was really, really wild in my early twenties and a bit self-destructive.

The movie 'Black Cat,' from 1934, is one of my favorite movies.

I feel like I've matured more musically than I have personally. But I totally embrace what becoming older has to offer. I find the wisdom that comes with each passing year is a trip.

Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it - 'St. Anger' being the fire and 'Death Magnetic' being the phoenix.