Robert Hunter

“A song doesn't happen as a whole verse; it happens linearly, line by line, almost word by word, phrase by phrase. And if each phrase, each line, has a proper emotional feel and connects to the line before it and the line after it, the song will be doing what it should be doing.”

“I got really, really sick with a spinal infection that put me in a hospital for a couple of months, and it was touch and go. I had my guitar with me, and as soon as I got well enough to play, there was nothing else to do in that hospital. The nurses would come in and request songs.”

“When you get ready to vote, make sure you know what you are doing.”

“When I got out of the hospital, it was one of those classic things - you're looking death in the eye, and it changes you. I thought, I ought to go back on the road.”

“I tend to write things and don't go the next step and try to get it published. I don't want to do book signings and stuff.”

“You who choose to lead must follow. But if you fall, you fall alone.”

“Being in a floodplain is like sitting down in a bathtub.”

“In wickedness of pride is lost the light to understand how little grace is earned and how much given.”

“If you can even manage to tell exactly what a song is about, all you do is put that song in a box forever, and it loses its evocative power.”

“I walk away from writing what I consider to be a good song - with a good character, a good story in it - with all I'm gonna really get out of that song. My greatest pleasure is to create it, not to record it, not to hear anyone else play it, though that can be nice too.”

“I'm not good at being lionized, and when I'm in 'Grateful Dead'-type situations, that happens.”

“One man gathers what another man spills”

“I feel I've got 10 books in me.”

“At the top of the cycle you write policies for everybody, no matter how bad, and at the bottom you cancel everybody, no matter how good. It's a manic-depressive cycle.”