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" 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. "

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" I think my legacy is important because my songs - perhaps more than those of any other songwriter I know - cover every movement from 1965 on, socially and artistically. If you want songs about ecology, I've got ecology songs; if you want songs about spirituality, I've got spiritual songs. "

Donovan

Think

Got

Know

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

" Bohemia isn't somewhere an artist runs to escape society. It's a place where like-minded artists gather to plot the downfall of dogma and ignorance. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Some music will make you dance. Other music helps you release tension. "

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

" The Beatles and I became fast friends. "

" Publishers and record companies love a broken heart. "

" I get plastic nails done in the salon. When I was younger, they were stronger, but now I get my nails built up. Then I can dance over the strings. I say, 'Okay, I need four nails; I'm a guitarist.' Sometimes if I'm in a strange place, the girl says, 'Yeah, all the guys say that.' "

" 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. "

" On the outskirts of the desert in Yemen, there was a cafe with a jukebox that had 'Sunshine Superman' on it. I loved that. "

" The idea of the mystic solo, meditating away on his own, is only one path of yoga. Very early on, I chose the path of Life. One path is austerity and isolation, the other is Life. But they both lead to the same place. "

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

" 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. "

" 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

" It's really much more than the plastic of album covers and record sales and dollars and cents. Music is just everybody's mother. Music is the power of you. "

" I meditate every day and do some hatha yoga every day. "

" Sometimes the songs just come to me. I don't sit down to write like you'd sit down to make a pair of boots. "

Donovan

Down

You

" 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

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

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