David Crosby

“Being a hippy was the most natural thing in the world to me.”

“I gave up bread, and I've lost a bunch of weight, which is very good because I'm diabetic.”

“My songs emerge from my life, or wherever they do, unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own.”

“You do not get to choose the events that come your way nor the sorrows that interrupt your life. They will likely be a surprise to you, catching you off quard and unprepared. You may hold your head in your hands and lament your weak condition and wonder what you ought to do. To suffer, that is common to all. To suffer and still keep your composure, your faith and your smile, that is remarkable. Pain will change you more profoundly than success or good fortune. Suffering shapes your perception of life, your values and priorities, and your goals and dreams. Your pain is changing you,”

“I've met Bill Clinton, Obama a couple of times... I certainly didn't meet George Bush, and wouldn't want to.”

“I'm an inveterate bookstore wanderer. I read constantly, so I love a good bookstore. I can't help it.”

“When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music.”

“When I was 11 years old, my parents wanted me to do something besides get in trouble. So they enrolled me in sailing classes at the Sea Shell Association in Santa Barbara, Calif. From the moment I climbed into that 8-foot dinghy in 1952, I knew instinctively what to do and sensed I had done it before.”

“I have a pretty clear picture of the whole weight of my life, and there are things that I've done that are good, and I'm proud of them. There are things that I'm really not proud of, and that they, you have to look at me with a perspective, and I try really hard to do that, to keep from thinking I'm cool and ever so smart.”

“There are a lot of people who look great but can't sing.”

“I've always been a very careful sailor. I know, me and being careful - doesn't really sound right, does it? But when I sail, I take it seriously and take along spares for everything. You have to be careful when you're 1,500 miles from land. There's no one you can call. You're on your own.”

“I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.”

“My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.”

“I don't collect the way other people do. Some people collect rare guitars, like, 'I have a '54 Strat worth $50,000.' And I don't collect the way Nash does. Nash has Duane Allman's guitar and Johnny Cash's guitar. I bought guitars because they sounded good. I played them, they sounded unbelievably good, and I couldn't resist.”

“The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?”

“Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.”

“I am having so much fun performing, I feel almost guilty. I think, my God, I hope no one comes and busts me for this.”

“I gave a Collings dreadnought to a young guitar player in the Valley where I live because he didn't have a good acoustic, and he's a terrific player.”

“I love voyaging - the longest has been 3,000 miles to Hawaii. I've also spent weeks all over the Caribbean.”

“I'm older than I'd like and I'm creaky, but I'm doing alright.”