“We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life, a simple life, a good life.”

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.

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.

I am so used to having a comfortable life. What will it be like when I am no longer able to just buy anything I want?

The thing that is probably most important is having a brain, and to be able to figure things out and learn things very rapidly.

It’s quite difficult for me not to be able to return to my country, but in my country justice has been murdered.

I feel really passionately about safe, comfortable roads, crosswalks, and sidewalks. Everyone of all economic backgrounds should be able to get to school or the grocery store safely and efficiently so they can live better lives.

If I’d had fame early on, I’d have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.

You let things run in order to have some sanity and be able to do your work and not feel pre-judged.

To me, success is one’s ability to keep the faith, develop his God-given talents, and be able to honestly say at the close of life, “the world is a better place because I have lived.”

When I finished my A-levels, I assumed I’d be able to get work as an actor. But I couldn’t. I didn’t get an audition. Nothing. So I thought I’d better train and then the parts would come.