“How many Beethovens are there that just for lack of the training, the world doesn’t get exposed to.”

To me, that’s the key thing, the pursuit of happiness. That’s the basic, ultimate freedom.

Music is more objective, I think, than a lot of art is, but a surprising amount of it is cultural.

Everybody needs adventure, and everybody needs something to enlarge his or her lives.

You don’t want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one.

We were just in line to see what was going to happen.

We have quite a large area, and that makes it more fun for us – certainly more satisfying, because it doesn’t restrict us to one particular idea or one particular style.

The thing of being able to share somebody’s reality, which has so far been a matter of what communication is about, you know.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.

You need music, I don’t know why. It’s probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual.

I think that the important changes have already happened, changes in consciousness. It’s mostly a matter of everything else catching up to that.

Partly. Part Of The Way You Can Tell You’re Alive Is By How Much Pain You’re Experiencing, Or How Little.

The nature of what we’re doing is something, which is by its very nature, is non-formulaic.

American society has gone completely into denial.

Done time in the lock-up, done time on the streets. Done time on the upswing, and time in defeat.

I think The Grateful Dead kind of represents the spirit of being able to go out and have an adventure in America at large.

Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It’s as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider.

Emily Dickinson provided four or more alternates for every word; Beethoven wrestled with endings to the point of exhaustion; in our day Jerome Robbins and his lack of decision are a byword in the dance profession.