I know great songwriters. Fred Neil would come up when he was in L.A., we all used to hang out. He would sit there and sing, and we would just melt. I mean, we would go to his recording sessions.

So gradually, and then I had an Italian roadster that I built, it took me five years to build it, it was stolen from me and stripped. I said, well maybe we should have another where we shouldn't steal from each other.

When I wrote "Green, Green," it was like a really a statement of where I was at philosophically in my life.

The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else.

And a friend of mine in the Christys, we used to sit up at night and talk and read and wonder if reincarnation, and if it wasn't reality, what would happen to the human spirit when the body dies? Is there an afterlife? Just questions like that.

You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don't. There's just no rhyme or reason.

To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true... I've never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.

Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space, but when you return, it's the same old place.

There was a report that used to come out back in those days, I don't know if it was the Gavin Report or something like that. And they said, no matter what McGuire comes out with next, we're not gonna play it.

And there was a real shedding of the old dogma, like boundaries of morality were being broken down and everybody was into the new party mode of just loving on each other. Which destroyed thousands of us. I lost 16 of my personal friends through that lifestyle.

There's only one drummer. We all travel to his beat. Well, I couldn't sing his song. Because for me, it wasn't a truthful statement. Well, Linda sang it, and it was a monster for her.

I know great songwriters. Fred Neil would come up when he was in L.A., we all used to hang out. He would sit there and sing, and we would just melt. I mean, we would go to his recording sessions.

If you listen to the left track on their album, if you get The Best of the Mamas and Papas, you listen to the left track, you can still hear a little bit of my voice. My son discovered that once.

It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.

Marches alone won't bring integration when human respect is disintegratin'

But times changed, and I changed, and I didn't feel that way anymore. The Beatles were happening. I think that was probably the main thing. The Beatles just changed the whole world of music.

Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace.

My buddies worked with me for weeks, and I went up to take my test, and started crying because I couldn't remember the words. I can remember songs. If you put it to a melody, I would have sung it to 'em in a minute.

I did about a 100 concerts this year. All over the United States. We're cutting back next year to about 40. We generate money for an organization called Mercy Corps.

I remember we woke up one morning at Denny's house and John Phillips called. He said, you guys okay? We said, yeah, what's wrong, what's going on? He said, well, everybody's dead over at Sharon's house at Terry Melcher's place.

I was very laced with drugs myself, but Fred seemed to be even more so than me. That might have had something to do with it. That might have had something to do with nobody wanting to play my records, too, I don't know.

That's why I had to leave Hair on Broadway, because I did it for about a year, and one night I was doing the show, and I realized, well, this is not real. I told the director. He says, man, it was a killer show tonight.

When I wrote 'Green, Green,' it was like a really a statement of where I was at philosophically in my life.

I will be a President for all the people, whether they voted for me or not, whether they are young or old and particularly for the Irish abroad. I'm looking forward to it and I think it will be exciting and wonderful.

You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.

My dad wouldn't buy me tight pants. I had to get my own money to buy them.

Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.

If I'm going to be honest about it, I think men get to do this sort of thing all the time. You look at countless performances by great male actors who get to play the whole gamut of human emotions. Women aren't regularly allowed to do that, and I don't know why people are so frightened by it.

The squeeze machine is not going to cure anybody, but it may help them relax; and a relaxed person will usually have better behavior.

One out of two aint gonna make it Those are the odds these days And in a world of statistics Hes left tryin to survive Till every other Friday at five.

If you look around Brazil you see pregnant women everywhere. Here you don't see that as much. There the only thing they do is babies, babies, babies! Especially the poor families.

The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement.

I think of Pope Gregory the Great. He wanted the cloister. He wanted to pray and study, and yet he was thrust into this administrative job, and he submitted to that. And in that submission, he became a great leader. You could say that the only person who is safe to lead is the person who is free to submit.

When we feel love and kindness toward others it not only makes others feel loved and cared for but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.

A book and a movie are different animals. You need a cinematic perspective to be involved in the motion pictures. And this is something I lack.

You cant say youre going to jump the Grand Canyon and then jump some other canyon.

The Obama administration is an affront to every freedom-loving American,and a threat to every private sector job in this country.

A free public broadcast license is a privilege.

We are acknowledging the close personal nature of our 10 years at war and the strong bonds of fidelity that Marines have for one another, especially for those fellow Marines who we have lost.

All I want to be is human and American and have all the same rights and I will shut up.

Every city is always changing, on its own trajectory.

To bring out a new technology for consumers first, you just had a very long road to go down to try to find people who actually would pay money for something.

It is the duty of man to raise up man.

Oh all the time when Victoria Wood and I did our series. There were people asking 'Can women be funny?' People still ask that. It's like asking: 'Can women breathe in and out?'

I was at a New Year's Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, 'I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,' and I actually meant it.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

I think one of the battles for fiction writers is how much to invent or exaggerate.