Time & Perspective Quote by Andy Summers

“It’s hard to avoid the past but one goes forward” has the plainspoken clarity of a musician who’s spent decades watching yesterday’s riffs become tomorrow’s mythology. Andy Summers isn’t dressing it up as self-help; he’s stating a working reality: the past is sticky, not scenic. You don’t “move on” the way people post about it. You carry it - in your hands, in your habits, in the tone you reach for when you pick up a guitar.

The line’s power sits in its two-part rhythm. First clause: inevitability, almost resignation. “Hard to avoid” frames the past as something you dodge in the street, not something you honor in a museum. Second clause: motion, stripped of drama. “One goes forward” uses the impersonal “one,” which reads like a rule of physics rather than a personal mantra. That distance is the subtext: survival isn’t always inspirational; sometimes it’s procedural.

In Summers’ context - a player forever tethered to The Police’s shadow while carving a long solo life in jazz, photography, and experimental work - the quote feels like a quiet negotiation with legacy. Fame turns your earlier self into a public artifact; audiences want the old hits, critics want the old story. He doesn’t deny nostalgia’s pull. He just refuses to confuse it with a destination. Forward, here, is less about triumph than craft: keep making, keep changing, keep walking, even with history tugging at your sleeve.