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" I am so highly skilled that when I pick up a phrase and then pick up my guitar, a form comes out almost immediately - a song - and once I start, I have to finish it. "

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" I never considered myself an entertainer. I always felt I had to be connected to something meaningful, or it wasn't worth doing. "

Donovan

Myself

Doing

Connected

" I was listening to a lot of bebop. And to Miles Davis. Everyone thinks I was just in the folk world in 1966, but in 1963 and 1964, I was absorbing enormous amounts of music, from baroque to jazz to blues to Indian music. "

" 'Sunshine Superman' was a pioneering work that for the first time presented a fusion of Celtic, jazz, folk, rock, and Indian music as well as poetry. "

" The poet is the voice of the people. And when the poet presents certain ideas, two phrases in one poem can alter a generation's view. So poets have always been feared - and controlled and jailed. "

" Honors and awards are very interesting, and I truly accept them. I have very high regard for what they mean. What they mean is that they're pointing to the work. "

" When I was a boy, I had a grand, big tape recorder, and I made late-night radio shows with glasses of water and funny voices. I just loved radio plays. "

" Linda's in all the songs. 'Sunshine Superman,' 'Hampstead Incident,' 'Young Girl Blues'... Linda's the muse. "

" Society may shun bohemia, may put it down, may consider it useless and ineffective, but it is where everything cooks and boils and is created. "

" I have to say, post-fame was difficult because it wasn't just fame: it was super-fame of a kind that few have. It was attached to a generation's dreams, and my own personal dreams were mixed up in it, too. "

" I'm in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Jimmy Page gave me the MOJO Maverick award. I got an Ivor Novella Award for my very first song. "

Donovan

Rock

Award

" The songs I write and sing try to say important things with a lightness. "

" It's not like me and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr hang out every week, but we keep together in promoting Transcendental Meditation. "

Donovan

Meditation

Together

" Before, it had been fame, and then super-fame came. And then it became super-super-fame. One loses one's personal life, really; you're recognized everywhere. But I embraced that. "

" I have always just experimented, and I come from a very ancient, acoustic root. It was very hard to put a finger on me. "

Donovan

Finger

Hard

" I've experimented with so many different sounds, it's difficult to say what the Donovan sound really is, but it's essentially my voice and guitars. "

" Yogis have human emotions, but the thing is not to let anger and doubt become an obsession. "

" I went on the Andy Williams show, the Smothers Brothers show, and maybe I shouldn't have. But regrets - I don't think I have any. "

" With songwriters like me who are prolific, you just write the song and then put it on tape. "

" When I met Bob Dylan, I was definitely impressed. This guy had come from the American folk world, but he was very schooled in poetry, too. He'd studied the Beat poets, of course. I grew up in the British bohemian scene. Dylan grew up in the American bohemian scene. So I was very pleased to meet such a guy. "

" The human race is ill because we have no contact with the lowest level of consciousness. "

" Part of being a pop star is image. I'm told by many of my female fans that I was the poster on their bedroom walls. But if I only had that - the image and the beauty and the curly locks - I would have been a 'normal' pop star, one who comes and goes after one hit record. "

" I didn't realise that I was so accomplished on the guitar until someone said to me, 'How do you do that?' That someone was John Lennon. He asked me to teach him my technique. "

Donovan

Said

Someone

" A writer without a pen would be like a duck without water! "

Donovan

Writer

Duck

" I can't help it: when something strikes me, I write it down. "

" I found in Rick Rubin a kindred soul. When I visited his home and looked in his library, I saw he was reading the very same New Age books I had picked up the month before. "

" There's only one thing, in the end, and that's singing truth in a pleasant way. "

" Publishers and record companies love a broken heart. "

" I sounded like Bob Dylan for about five minutes, and it was blown out of all proportion. "

" In bohemian circles, we were very aware that poetry was missing from popular culture. "

" My father was a part of that generation, and my mother, too - the late-'30s, early-'40s big-band generation. Frank Sinatra, Art Blakey, Gene Krupa, Billie Holiday - all that stuff was in my background. "