Citazioni

Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why.

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

[During his Oscar acceptance speech]: Thanks for inviting me to your party.

[About Elvis Presley] He was as big as the whole country itself, as big as the whole dream. He just embodied the essence of it and he was in mortal combat with the thing. Nothing will ever take the place of that guy.

[About Elvis Presley] There have been a lot of tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one King.

[on Bob Dylan] Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual. He had the vision and the talent to make a pop record that contained the whole world.

When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.

When you get the music and the lyrics right, your voice disappears into the voices of those you've chosen to write about... But all the telling detail in the world doesn't matter if the song lacks an emotional center.

You know the old saying: Trust the art, not the artist. I think that's true. I think somebody can do real good work and be a fool in a variety of ways.

Adult life is dealing with an enormous amount of questions that don't have answers. So I let the mystery settle into my music. I don't deny anything, I don't advocate anything, I just live with it.

In the third grade a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.

[at the 2012 Grammy Awards] America, are you alive out there?

[introducing Pete Seeger on his 90th birthday party at Madison Square Gardens] He's gonna look a lot like your granddad that wears flannel shirts and funny hats. He's gonna look like your granddad if your granddad can kick your ass. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country's illusions about itself.

[on cancellation of a performance in North Carolina over transgender bathroom issues] Some things are more important than a rock show.

[on Donald Trump] The republic is under siege by a moron, basically. Without overstating it, it's a tragedy for our democracy. The ideas he's moving to the mainstream are all very dangerous ideas - white nationalism and the alt-right movement. We have certain problems in the United States - tremendous inequality of wealth distribution. That makes for ripe ground for demagoguery. He has a very simple answer to all these very, very complex problems.

Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.