I just sat down and thought, I'm going to write a song today, I'm going to give it a try. So I just stuck it on a tape like everything else. That was just another song.

I made this record without a record label.

I don't know too many people because I stay at my house, I write songs, I go to the store.

Shouldn't the low strings be at the bottom?

I'm not really getting too involved. My position is, Here's the record. I'm at your disposal.

I love to get people to sing and play together.

Rewriting to me means, if I work on it for three days, I've rewritten it.

You could put this record on and not get jarred half-way through. I wanted it to be all cut from one cloth, and that was the way we took it through the whole production process.

I'm going to play as much as they want me to, as long as I can put up with what they book me.

Some people just come in, do it and they know it's right. It turns out better than you imagined it was going to sound. When that happens, you take it as a gift.

If you're asking me to compare myself to other people, I don't really know what other people are like.

I was living in Woodstock for a long time, and I thought, I got to get out of here, man.

A person like Carole King could make up something, change it, and actually improve it.

I had 25 or 30 songs. Sequencing the record, I left that to the producer. I'm not into doing that stuff.

Some gigs will go great. I figure you do a gig, and as many as can get there will get there.

Every one of the songs was based around picking an acoustic guitar. That was part of the concept from the beginning, that the tempos were going to go from slow to almost mid-tempo.

It took a bit of talking through administrative people, but only once did an attorney try and get in the way of the process and say their artist couldn't do it.

I saw Krishnamurti speak one time. And I thought, I'm not going to live here.

I taught myself how to play when I was about 13. I'm a lefty.

Doing this James Brown thing for the last couple of days has been ideal. But it's a different kind of fun.

Why do it, just because I can? That's kind of crazy.

I guess any time you believe in God you've got to be considered a spiritual person. That would make me a spiritual person. But I don't really know what that means.

I tend to think of all the songs the same - I give them all kind of equal rights.

Things kind of happen organically with me.

The bottom string is tuned to an open G.

I just sat down and thought, I'm going to write a song today, I'm going to give it a try. So I just stuck it on a tape like everything else. That was just another song.

The same people who never did their homework in high school are still doing that to this very day out in the real world.

People don't come to Asheville very often, and they don't know I'm there. I enjoy it. I like it.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

I guess a good song is a good song is a good song, ya know.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we'd just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot.

Peace Train is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings.

I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.

I have eighteen titles in the German language. I had a number one song in 1965.

Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies.

There's a lot of rage... you have to express it somehow. If I didn't express it in song, I'd become incredibly violent.

I do not mind having written the song at all. I just wish that I had written it in a different key, as the high d is hard to play. I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

I guess you could write a good song if your heart hadn't been broken, but I don't know of anyone whose heart hasn't been broken.

A song has to become as much a part of you as a tailored suit.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.