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

The Grateful Dead plays at religious services essentially.

Music is a universal language insofar as you don’t need to know anything else about a musician that you are playing with other than that they can play music.

Too much of a good thing is just about right

And when you don’t have to talk to the person next to you, that’s real clean. Takes a certain thing not to try to keep anything up, not to have to entertain one another.

I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I’m more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.

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

What’s been great about the human race gives you a sense of how great you might get, how far you can reach.

I’m goin’ where the wind don’t blow so strange, maybe off on some high cold mountain chain.

I mean, whatever kills you kills you, and your death is authentic no matter how you die.

If something doesn’t work, it becomes obvious immediately. This just isn’t going to work.

The world that you can go walk outside and walk around the block. That’s reality. The reality that’s being talked about is something else entirely.

Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

Playing in a group, I’m tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That’s just me getting older. I’m not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.

The satisfaction of producing a work of art is the thing of getting off on it on some level.

I mean, it saves you from ultimately from the boredom of having one point of view, like being locked in a room with nothing but your own point of view, your own references.

There’s a need for a ritual and for real joy and real bliss. Real fun.

I’m just looking for a mixture of songs and topics that aren’t the same thing over and over.

Memory is just as much of an instrument as anything else in music.

If you just do 50 to 60 shows a year, it’s not that much time away from home.

“It’s not where you got it from, it’s where you take it.” To me, that’s just an integral part of why I even bother making music.

Just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it’s going to take to get you on the radio.

Now it’s just sharp elbows, and instead of having a caucus where you sit down and say, ‘What are you doing for your country?’ you sit figuring out how to screw the other side.

It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

Just look at it. No wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother.