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

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" I can't save the world, but if I can share some ideas, people might be able to save themselves. "

" 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. "

" The Faces are my old chums. We used to hang out. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" My music translates again and again to younger generations of players because I broke all the rules, and they can break all the rules now, too. "

" In my time, we didn't know songs could last. All we ever thought of was next Tuesday. You never imagined a future. "

" 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. "

" Linda loves an argument, and I like to engage, too, but she knows that I'm a poet, so I will engage forever. We are in the Chinese astrology of dogs, and we are forever snapping at each other. "

" In England, we'd leave school at 15 and go on to a college, and I went to further education in a town called Welling Garden City. I fully immersed myself in bohemia there, which included poetry and modern art, jazz, philosophy, social radicalism. "

" Most people think that I heard Bob Dylan first and got a cap and harmonica. Really, it was Woody Guthrie. He was so influential. "

" Having had polio never held me back as I got older. Although having one leg smaller than the other isn't much fun, I could always get about without any trouble. Luckily, in the music industry, everyone was only interested in my singing and playing and not the size of my legs. "

" Meditation is certainly not a religion, cult, or spiritual path: it's actually a very basic practice to reduce stress. "

" 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 became a recluse many times and enjoyed a private life I didn't have during the '60s. "

" 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. "

" A man always has to leave his homeland, go to another time zone, another culture, to get a different recognition - to be accepted as someone who's following a different path, who's moving into a different mode. "

" 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'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. "

" I absorbed the vinyl of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Jack Elliott, to Michael McClure and then into the Beat poets, Allen Ginsberg. At campus, we were absorbing that stuff. We looked to America. "

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

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

" In 1968, I bought a 114-foot yacht, built in 1946, and lived on the Greek islands for a while. We had an extraordinary time in it. Then I gave it to The Beatles. "

" Celebrities can suffer a horrible loneliness even though they have millions of fans. I started doing meditations because I realized that a spiritual path was necessary. "

" 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 'Bohemian Manifesto' represents those that actually have to step out of society because they cannot join, but then they become the saviors of society because they create the actual possibilities of change. "