It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs. When I first heard Elvis' voice, I knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody ... hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway. People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.

You might be a rock and roll addict prancing on the stage. You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage.

The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.

Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through.

Don't matter how much money you got, there's only two kinds of people: there's saved people and there's lost people.

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands.

There would be brilliant songs, but, as [Bob] Dylan admitted on the recent Martin Scorsese documentary about him (No Direction Home), the specific muse that inspired "It's Alright Ma" would not return.