“We’re like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”

I Don’t Think There’s A Good Excuse For Being Unhappy. I’m Not Particularly Unhappy, But I Know What Pain Is. I think That Life Is Characterized By Pain.

I equate Deadheads to people that like black licorice. There aren’t many people that like black licorice, but the ones that do, REALLY REALLY like it! Or buttermilk, or whatever.

Magic is what we do, music is how we do it.

The great thing is the thing of being able to see things through many points of view. That’s enlarging.

Listening. That’s what music is about. You hear it. And I’d listen to it and something would move me one way or another; and I would try and play it.

And for me there’s still more material than 20 lifetimes that I can use up.

I like all the kinds of music I’ve been into. I’m certainly not a purist in that I will only play country licks in a country song or blues licks in blues stuff.

If you are picking the lesser of two evils, you are still picking Evil.

If you’re able to enjoy something, to devote your life to it or a reasonable amount of time and energy, it will work out for you.

In folk music, I’ve always been fond of the fragment. The song that has one verse. And you don’t know anything about the characters, you don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re doing something important. I love that. I’m really a sucker for that kind of song.

If you think of music as a universal language, it still has some very powerful dialects.

Some things may work, but they definitely won’t work every time. Some things may work at various times.

It’s much too late to do anything about rock & roll now.

Right now, America is under the gun. It’s being tested and is being co-opted in a big way.

Now it has gotten a whole new leg. It has gotten a thing of being able to actually step in somebody’s reality and walk through it like they do, experience it the way they do, specifically.

If you assume you haven’t learned anything yet, there’s no reason your playing can’t stay dynamic all your life.