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

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.

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

To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.

Blah, blah, blah. What’s a crime? What’s criminality? What can you do, what can’t you do, and so forth. All these things are really confusing. A lot of it is really contradictory; it doesn’t really make sense.

The bigger issue, was the whole takeover of the food industry by big corporations.

I mean, it’s gotten to be really stretched out now. It was never my intention to say, this is the demographics of our audience.

See, there’s only two theaters, man that are set up pretty groovy all around for music and for smooth stage changes, good lighting and all that – the Fillmore and The Capitol Theatre. And those are the only two in the whole country.

We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.

You have to be ready, and also you have to discard notions that are fondly held by a lot of musicians, about sequences and notes and about scales and musical systems as a whole. If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.

A simple life, a good life. And think about moving the whole human race ahead a step, or a few steps.

We’re involved in a society which is undergoing some really weird changes now.

It’s a joke. Greed and the desire to take drugs are two separate things.

The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude.

As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home -first for six years, then for 19 months.

Is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people.

My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I’m conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words.

The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel

The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain.

I couldn’t get a job to save my life. That’s why I wrote ‘Road to Paloma.’ That got into Sundance and got into that scene, and that’s how I got the role in ‘The Red Road.’

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.