Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.

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.

I'm goin' where the wind don't blow so strange, maybe off on some high cold mountain chain.

Sometimes the lights all shining on me, other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been.

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.

The information is there, you may not perceive it, but it does affect the lower orders. There are places where it just peaks out. It is like the color spectrum, it just simply goes beyond where you can perceive it any more but it is still going on. If you decide that the invisible continuation of the color spectrum is important to your sense of what reality is about, then you would want to extend it. Extend it as far as you could, as an aesthetic.