“You’ve gotta have somebody to trust, that knows a lot.”

They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with. And they say that like it’s a bad thing.

I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.

I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.

Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don’t get out much. It’s true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.

The Universe is making music all the time.

Their memory’s like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can’t remember Tell the things you can’t forget that History puts a saint in every dream.

But then I’m one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.

I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong. I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.

When your down on your luck and you’ve lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans.

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete.

For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

All that you’ve loved is all you own.

I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

My wife called me a mule. She once said, “I didn’t marry a man; I married a mule!” I kept thinking about it. It was in the back of my head. I think it makes a good title for an album.

If you have a guru, leave him; if you don’t have, get one. In other words, keep changing your gurus! Ocean’s wisdom comes from knowing many ships and many fishes, many storms and many waves!

For one who knows me, I am one with him; for one who wants to know me, I am very near to him; and for one who does not know me, I am a beggar before him.

The truths that I know best I have learned on my knees. I never know a thing well, till it is burned into my heart by prayer.

I knew that if I did not start chanting with people, that I would never be able to clean out the dark corners of my own heart. I knew it with every cell in my body and mind.

I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.

Don’t give up on your dreams. You can become the person you know you really are.

Afflictions make the heart more deep, more experimental, more knowing and profound, and so, more able to hold, to contain, and beat more.

Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never knew was missing.