Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I first met Linda Lawrence in March 1965 in the green room of 'Ready Steady Go!,' the British pop TV show. Linda was a friend of one of the co-hosts. She had an art-school vibe, and after a brief conversation, I asked her to dance to a soul record playing. As we jazz danced, I fell in love. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Donovan

Generation

View

People

" The way I sing my songs leads the listener into a place of introspection, a state of mind that can trigger self-healing and the kind of profound rest you cannot get from sleep alone. "

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

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

" 'Superman' had nothing to do with the superhero or physical power. It's a reference to the book 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra,' by Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote about the evolution of consciousness to reach a higher superman state. "

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

" When the mid-'70s came around, it looked like, 'Oh-oh, here come the punks.' But if you look closely at The Who and The Kinks, the anger and the frustration is there... There is, within me, just the same social discontent as I go through my career. But to be typecast as a singer of peace and love is fine. "

" 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. "

Donovan

I Am

Start

" The Beatles and I became fast friends. "

" A young person coming up and saying, 'I absolutely love your music,' is very encouraging. "

" Rock and jazz came together in a very powerful way on 'Barabajagal.' "

" After having polio, my right leg was weaker, so I wasn't great at football. But I swam lots and even did long-distance running. "

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

Donovan

Writer

Duck

" If you have a loved one, you can survive anything. "

" 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. "

" The audiences used to say, 'Are you a Donovan fan or a Dylan fan?' It was all very naive, really. "

" What I needed and actually need is a discipline of tradition, which is lacking in our civilization. Discipline of tradition and the ceremony of humbleness. "

" I think of myself as a poet. I grew up with poetic influences - what I know from my background is the bardic poetry, which came down through oral tradition. "

" Blues and jazz are such a root to music. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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 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 didn't know until later, but my uncle was quite a famous bohemian in Glasgow, and he played guitar. My father was a kind of a poetic bohemian, and he read me poetry. "

Donovan

Know

Poetry

" The similarity between my music and The Beatles' music is it has within it a very positive quality. It's woven with humor. "

" In the 1960s, I was convinced that the world was extremely mentally ill. "

" I wasn't perfect, although during the '60s, I may have appeared to be. After all, I was partying away there for awhile. From age 17 to 25, I worked only on the outer man, and I did pretty well, but I needed to go back and work on the inside. "

" I learned that if you wait long enough, you just grow older. "

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

" Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation. "