There is no person that love cannot heal; there is no soul that love cannot save.
— Carlos Santana
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.
I realized that it's all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba.
Most people don't have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.
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.
My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved.
I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.
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 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.
Your wrinkles either show that you're nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you're always smiling.
The Devil is like a strainer that separates the mud from the gold.
Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.
I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.
First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.
If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.
Everybody sooner or later has to drop the luggage and the baggage of illusions.
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.
KISS is Las Vegas entertainment. A musician doesn't need the mask.
The more choices we give patients affected by depression, the better we will serve them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.
Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain... you hear them and they're affixed to you.
Just as we have two eyes and two feet, duality is part of life.
I knuckle down with my demons, and with my weaknesses.
Stay in your heart.
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.
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.
The music of Hendrix wakes people up to their possibilities. It's more than just dreaming about being a guitar hero.
Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said, 'Oh man, this is the stuff.' It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling.
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.
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!
A lot of people said to me, 'Enough with the guest vocalists for a while. We want to hear the Mexican play the guitar!'
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.
The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.
My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.
If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.
There's never one sunrise the same or one sunset the same.
