The only way things work around here is if everybody wants it to work. If everybody wants it to work, then it has a prayer. Even then, there's no guarantee. But at least it has a prayer.

But hey, when you live in Watts, you need a little smack to get by, you know what I mean? You need something soft and comfortable in your life, 'cause you're not going to get it from what's around you. And society isn't going to give it to you.

I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.

Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you've been to some of those places, you think, 'How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?'

This virtual reality stuff is the technological equivalent, really, of psychedelics.

We didn't invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead. We were just in line to see what was going to happen.

Music goes way back before language does. And music is like the key to a whole spiritual existence which this society doesn't even talk about. We know it's there. The Grateful Dead plays at religious services essentially. We play at the religious services of the new age. Everybody gets high, and that's what it's all about really. Getting high is a lot more real than listening to a politician. You can think that getting high actually did happen - that you danced, and got sweaty, and carried on. It really did happen. I know when it happens. I know it when it happens every time.