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

- Kirk Hammett

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

- Kirk Hammett

A life lived unexplored is a life not worth living.

- Kirk Hammett

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 as…

- Kirk Hammett

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

- Kirk Hammett

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

- Kirk Hammett

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 a…

- Kirk Hammett

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

- Kirk Hammett

Ampeg made incredible guitar heads in the early Nineties and then stopped. And I don't know why. The one we used had a nice clean, warm sound, and it…

- Kirk Hammett