Robert Hunter Quotes

There are times when you get hit upon, Try hard but you cannot give. Other times you'd gladly part, With what you need to live

River gonna take me, Sing me sweet and sleepy,
Sing me sweet and sleepy all the way back home,
It's a far gone lullaby sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come since I first left home

Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait

Comes a Time when the blind man takes your hand says DON'T YOU SEE?

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

When I was just a little young boy, Papa said Son, you'll never get far, I'll tell you the reason if you want to know, 'cause child of mine, there isn't really very far to go.

I'm not good at being lionized, and when I'm in 'Grateful Dead'-type situations, that happens.

But never give your love, my friend, Unto a foolish heart

Everything you cherish
Throws you over in the end
Thorns will grab your ankles
From the gardens that you tend.

Don't waste the breath to save your face, When you have done your best, And even more is asked of you, Let fate decide the rest.

Let my inspiration flow, in token lines suggesting rhythm, that will not forsake me, till my tale is told and done

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own

Everything you gather is just one that you can lose.

Let there be songs to fill the air.

Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist ... and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell like (must I take you by the hand, every so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resoundingbells ... By my faith if this be insanity, then for the love of God permit me to remain insane.

There's a better way. There has to be education, and the education has to come from the poets and musicians, because it has to touch the heart rather than the intellect, it has to get in there deeply.

The storyteller makes no choice, soon you will not hear his voice, his job is to shed light, and not to master

Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color, hold away despair

Walk out of any doorway feel your way, feel your way like the day before Maybe you'll find direction around some corner where it's been waiting to meet you.

Every song falls short of the glory of what a song could be. That's why the urge is there to start again and yet again. Often it's the fault of rhyme. I've discovered a hundred times that there just aren't enough rhymes to say what I wanted to say, so I said something else instead. Sometimes it was a better thing, but the thing I meant to say went unsaid. So there's an opening for another song.

I don't believe there's any evidence that credit scoring is a risk factor. What is it about someone having a worse credit score that makes them a worse driver? (Insurers) can't answer that.

When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door

I won't slave for beggar's pay, likewise gold and jewels, but I would slave to learn the way, to sink your ship of fools.

Crippled but free, I was blind all the time I was learning to see.

Without love in a dream it will never come true

Keep an eye to the future, and ear to the past, and after thinking it over notice nothing much lasts.

It's better to wear seaweed socks than stick a melon in your brother's ear.

Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there

I got really, really sick with a spinal infection that put me in a hospital for a couple of months, and it was touch and go. I had my guitar with me, and as soon as I got well enough to play, there was nothing else to do in that hospital. The nurses would come in and request songs.

When you get ready to vote, make sure you know what you are doing.

I walk away from writing what I consider to be a good song - with a good character, a good story in it - with all I'm gonna really get out of that song. My greatest pleasure is to create it, not to record it, not to hear anyone else play it, though that can be nice too.

The sky was yellow and the sun was blue...

If you can even manage to tell exactly what a song is about, all you do is put that song in a box forever, and it loses its evocative power.

At the top of the cycle you write policies for everybody, no matter how bad, and at the bottom you cancel everybody, no matter how good. It's a manic-depressive cycle.

Outside major darkness where the circle is complete there's no fear that lovers born will ever fail to meet

A song doesn't happen as a whole verse; it happens linearly, line by line, almost word by word, phrase by phrase. And if each phrase, each line, has a proper emotional feel and connects to the line before it and the line after it, the song will be doing what it should be doing.

Destroy yourself physically and morally and insist that all true brothers do likewise as an expression of unity.

Being in a floodplain is like sitting down in a bathtub.

In wickedness of pride is lost the light to understand how little grace is earned and how much given.

There are things you can replace, and others you cannot. The time has come to weigh those things, this space is getting hot.