- My songs emerge from my life, or wherever they do, unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own. I can't legislate a song into being, it just will not happen for me.
- We don't take show business or the spotlight seriously.
- [observation, 2016, about whether he considers his legacy] No. I should, I guess, and I expect most people do, but I don't. I don't think about the past, I don't think about awards, I don't rest on my laurels, I don't think about any of that stuff. I think about what I'm supposed to do today and what I need to do tomorrow and what I may be able to do next week and what I need to do this coming year. My focus is almost entirely 100-per-cent forward.
- [on performing at Woodstock, 1969] Everybody was curious about us. We were the new kid on the block, it was our second public gig, nobody had ever seen us, everybody had heard the record, everybody wondered, 'What in the hell are they about?' So when it was rumored that we were about to go on, everybody came. Every band that played there, including all the ones that aren't in the movie, were all standing in an arc behind us, and that was intimidating, to say the least! I'm looking back at Hendrix and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm and The Who and Janis and Sly and Grace and Paul, everybody that I knew and everybody I didn't know. We were so happy that it went down well that we could barely handle it.
- [on reconnecting with his son] Now, I'd known that he existed for 30 years and tortured myself about it: Well, he probably died in a snowstorm or in a dumpster, every terrible scenario. Then, he winds up looking, and it's me. He gets a hold of me. These meet-ups usually go very badly. One person or the other drags in baggage. We weren't good enough for you? Me and mom? Is that it? Whatever baggage you bring in, it usually destroys the chance of contact. And James came in and gave me a clean slate and let me earn my way into his life from a fresh beginning. That is a gift, a kindness, that you don't often see in this life. And the result? He's my best writing partner. We write all the time. I have to treasure that.
- I'll tell you my favorite Woodstock story. There was a girl walking in the mud, barefoot. She cuts her foot, badly, on some glass in the mud. It's bleeding a lot. She's standing there like a stork, holding her foot, crying. Over on the side is a New York State Thruway cop, fully uniformed. He had just come on duty, and his shoes were shined, and his pants were creased. He knew he looked good. Without any question at all-and you have to remember the cops were our enemies back then-he walks into the mud, picks the girl up, calms her down, carries her to his car, lays her gently in the back seat, and then 14 hippies push the car out of the mud so he can take her to the hospital. That cooperation? That's my shit. Those are my people. That cop is my people. Those hippies are my people.
- Singer-songwriters, man, we came out of folk music. Folk music came out of the Middle European troubadours, who carried the news from town to town. So that's part of our tradition. The town crier is also part of it. 'It's 12 o'clock and all is well.' Or: 'It's 11:30 and our country is on fire.' So politics is part of our job that we take seriously every once in a while if our country starts shooting its own children while they're protesting on a college campus. You probably should say something. You probably should be a witness. You should probably write "Ohio."
- [on streaming] This thing with the streaming - it cuts my income in half. Literally. The only money I make is from live shows. But these younger musicians are at the stage where they have to play that gig, collect that couple hundred dollars, put gas in the van, give everybody enough money to eat, and hit the road for 180 miles to the next place where they're going to play for 35 people. They're just barely scraping by. And that's insane. These are the people who are going to make the music tomorrow. Or we're not going to have any.
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