Grateful Dead Quotes

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

I don't really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I'm not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am - I don't listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence. ~ Mike Gordon

But the Grateful Dead, as the fanatic fans point out, are a way of life: someone else's. Twentieth-century teenagers, especially American ones, have been brilliant at creating their own culture, their own music, clothes, and point(s) of view. It's sad and fraudulent that the kind of wholesale worship of some historical way of life has settled over so many young people, infecting them like a noxious gas ... I love the dead
grew up in the thrall of Shakespeare and Hank Williams and James Dean. And I adore the Rolling Stones. But there's a difference between cherishing "Satisfaction" and wearing Keith Richards' hair while doing Keith Richards' drugs. I don't want to be Keith Richards. I wanna be me. Not
like the neo-Deadheads
just another extra in an overblown costume drama about something that wasn't that interesting the first time around. ~ Sarah Vowell

The Grateful Dead did not play in sets; no eight numbers to a set, then a twenty-five-minute break, and so on, four or five sets and then the close-out. The Dead might play one number for five minutes or thirty minutes. Who kept time? Who could keep time, with history cut up in slices. The Dead could get just as stoned as anyone else. The ... non-attuned would look about and here would be all manner of heads, including those running the show, the Pranksters, stroked out against the walls like slices of Jello. Waiting; with nobody looking very likely to start it back up. Those who didn't care to wait would tend to drift off, stoned or otherwise, and the Test would settle down to the pudding. ~ Tom Wolfe

When I grew up in the early '90s, the new World Wide Web felt like a gimmick, and I had no idea of the changes in store. In the summers, I'd backpack through Europe, follow the Grateful Dead. I had a car and a tent and traveled around the Great Lakes and out West. Jack Kerouac was my guiding light, his 'On the Road' a sacred text. ~ Tony D'Souza

I never listened to the Grateful Dead as a teen; the only exposure I got was what came through the walls when my sister was listening to them. ~ J.K. Simmons

I think The Grateful Dead kind of represents the spirit of being able to go out and have an adventure in America at large. ~ Jerry Garcia

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. ~ Jerry Garcia

I know about Woodstock probably as much as your average person who is over 30, where I'd know Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead. ~ Demetri Martin

Pigpen was and is now forever one of the Grateful Dead. ~ Ron "Pigpen" McKernan

The Grateful Dead were an influence on our music but they weren't by a long shot the biggest influence. ~ Jon Fishman

Since the end is never told,
We pay the teller off in gold,
But he cannot be bought or sold. ~ Grateful Dead

More fun than a frog in a glass of milk. ~ Bob Weir

I mean people have compared us to like the Grateful Dead and all these like psychedelic sixties bands. ~ Jon Fishman

I went to Ithaca, found the Grateful Dead and my life was changed. ~ David Boreanaz

If all you got to live for is what you left behind
get yourself a powder charge and seal that silver mine. ~ Grateful Dead

The Toddstock thing is the closest thing, I have to say, a Grateful Dead sort of thing where it all lapses over from the formality of a concert into more of a lifestyle thing. ~ Todd Rundgren

Eventually they [Sarunas Marciulionis and Don Nelson] got a call from a representative of the Grateful Dead, whose members had been inspired by Lithuania's struggle for independence. Nelson and Marciulionis showed up at the address they were given in San Francisco, which was a small, nondescript garage. 'I thought we were the victim of a practical joke until we opened the door and there was a state-of-the-art recording studio' says Nelson.

'I still remember the Dead were trying out Beatles covers, doing stuff like "Here Comes the Sun" and "Hey Jude"... but they were just kind of working through things and sounding kind of nasally and, well, maybe there was a little pot going on. So Sarunas pulls me aside and says 'Donnie, no way these guys are famous. They're terrible.' '. ~ Jack McCallum

Duane Allman didn't see himself as the bandleader .. he led by example, and you gained a lot of respect from Duane if you earned it, if you proved you could keep up with him. If you couldn't, you'd either end up in awe of him or you might not even like him. He was very different from Jerry Garcia (guitar/leader of the Grateful Dead) who was very easy going. Duane didn't have time to be easy going ... there was much more urgency to his personality ~ Richard Betts

I always hated the Grateful Dead. Never even bought a Led Zeppelin album. ~ Denis Leary

An important meeting point for me was realizing the similarity between a DJ set and a Grateful Dead set: I grew up listening to how the Dead would take a song and just jam on it, and then transition into another song. ~ Avey Tare

We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus! ... ~ Brad Paisley

The Grateful Dead, they're my best friends. Their message of hope, peace, love, teamwork, creativity, imagination, celebration, the dance, the vision, the purpose, the passion all of the things I believe in makes me the luckiest Deadhead in the world. ~ Bill Walton

In a way, it's my way of dealing with, finding closure with Grateful Dead music, and giving thanks in a way to Jerry and Bob and all the guys in the band for making up this wonderful music. ~ Phil Lesh

Bruce's band is so different from the Grateful Dead; there's no lead guitar player, for one thing. ~ Phil Lesh

Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right ~ Grateful Dead

I didn't play after the Grateful Dead stopped playing. I didn't touch anything for three or four months, and I just got pretty crazy. ~ Bill Kreutzmann

Hunter he had these big tins of crushed pineapple that he'd gotten from the army,' Garcia said, 'and i had this glove compartment full of plastic spoons, and we had this little cooperative scene, eating this crushed pineapple day after day and sleeping in the cars and walking around. ~ Blair Jackson

We're sort of like the town whore that's finally become an institution. We're finally becoming respectable. ~ Jerry Garcia

The Grateful Dead played for three hours on a given night, plus sound check. ~ Bob Weir

I'm still walking, so I'm sure that I can dance. ~ John Barlow

If I'd known he was going to die, my last words to him would have meant something. They certainly wouldn't have been my out-of-tune attempt at singing that old Grateful Dead song he loved so much. No, I would have told him how I felt about him, straight out. No more flirting, wild-eyed whispers in the grass outside. I would have looked at him harder to ensure his image was permanently seared in my mind. I'd have asked him a million more things so I could remember what mattered before I got in the car on the way home from Custard's. Because after, nothing mattered. ~ Sarah Ockler

When the Grateful Dead needed a quality sound system to deliver our sonic payload, I learned electronics and speaker design. ~ Mickey Hart

There were many times during our career when he could've quit and done something else. But he knew that his power was with the Grateful Dead. He didn't want to go solo. Jerry was a groupist. He loved to group. ~ Mickey Hart

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

A friend of the devil is a friend of mine ~ Grateful Dead

It's good to have some kind of California in there. It's almost always appropriate. It's appropriate on a sunny day or late at night. If you grew up on the Grateful Dead, which I certainly did, you listened to 10 million bootlegs. But you realize that American Beauty has some really tight, well-arranged songs that aren't meandering. ~ Craig Finn

Everything we (the Grateful Dead) ever did was a demonstration of the value of cross-fertilization, It was unconscious at first, but when we started looking at each other, we had all these different influences ... Bobby Weir used to call it electric Dixieland. ~ Phil Lesh

Let it be known there is a fountain that was not made by the hands of men ~ Grateful Dead

And a ride in a hearse tells us we're all close to that final cruise ... when the body dies and we move on. It's just the body, man. It's just the body. The soul's already gone. So don't be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It's empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that's lost its soul. Now that is scary, man. - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues. ~ David Mutti Clark

Sergeant Pepper was dead. G.I. Joe lived on. George Bush was president, movies stars were dying from AIDS, kids were smoking crack in the ghettos and the suburbs, Muslims were blowing airliners from the skies, rap music ruled, and nobody cared much about the Movement anymore. It was a dry and dusty thing, like the air in the graves of Hendrix, Joplin, and God. She was letting her thoughts take her into treacherous territory, and the thoughts threatened her smiley face. She stopped thinking about the dead heroes, the burning breed who made the bombs full of roofing nails and planted them in corporate boardrooms and National Guard Armories. She stopped thinking before the awful sadness crushed her.

The sixties were dead. The survivors limped on, growing suits and neckties and potbellies, going bald and telling their children not to listen to that satanic heavy metal. The clock of the Age of Aquarius had turned, hippies and yippies had become preppies and yuppies. The Chicago Seven were old men. The Black Panthers had turned gray. The Grateful Dead were on MTV, and the Airplane had become a Top-40 Starship.

Mary Terror closed her eyes, and thought she heard the noise of wind whistling through the ruins. ~ Robert R. McCammon

When I heard Grateful Dead music, I knew that it was the most powerful force on the planet. ~ Mickey Hart

Without love and a dream it would never come true ... ~ Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead are faster than light drive. ~ Ken Kesey

Yeah, I miss the Grateful Dead. I miss that groove. I miss the brotherhood. Absolutely. There's no doubt about it. ~ Mickey Hart

Back in the days, the groups and the bands that we listened to were like Earth, Wind and Fire, Santana and Grateful Dead. We don't have a lot of those bands anymore. ~ Sheila E.

I've always loved New Orleans music. I always loved it when the Neville Brothers opened up for the Grateful Dead and the Dirty Dozen and all that. ~ Bill Kreutzmann

The future's here, we are it, we are on our own ~ John Perry Barlow

When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia
(former Grateful Dead guitarist) destroyed his life on
drugs. And yet hes being honored, like some godlike
figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Well, to tell you the straight honest truth, it was like a Grateful Dead cover band. I didn't feel - and nothing against the guys - I didn't feel that they were opening up like they should. I'll tell you what, with guitar players, Steven has what I like in guitar players. ~ Bill Kreutzmann

Whistle through your teeth and spit cuz, it's Alright ~ Jerry Garcia

It is often thought that spirits in the after-world do not breathe as we might do - and that in being dead, one does not require inhaling and exhaling anything.
Well, they do exchange ethers, and the body of a soul does in fact breathe, and talk and sing - though not with oxygen, but a rarefied vitality. And just as a newborn, the very first impulse that comes when one crosses over to the other side, past the veils of death, is to inhale deeply - and then relax. ~ Gabriel Brunsdon

Yep those are goosebumps. Or a bad case of arm acne. Or as I call it, armcne. ~ Daniel Waters

God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don't feel so well myself. ~ Eugene Ionesco

There is a festival where we wear the faces of demons to ward evil spirits from our dead in the vale. Sometimes we
fail. ~ Pierce Brown

It would have been so much in accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out of sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our mortality; all that makes against our efficiency - the memory of our failures, the hints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead friends. ~ Joseph Conrad

One sad consequence of this is that people don't feel permitted to try understand Internet infrastructure, so I'm really grateful to groups like Free Press and other nonprofits who are trying to make the issue urgent and comprehensible. And Andre Blum's book Tubes is great on this topic. ~ Astra Taylor

That parish which allows the living to grasp the no longer cold hand of the beloved dead ~ Dennis Potter

Was this really my life right now? How did I get to this point? A few months ago I was a single mother with no social life or romantic prospects anywhere in my future, and I was stuck at a dead-end job at a bar. Now, I was opening a business, doing what I loved every single day, and found the love of my life who was the best father in the world to our son.

Oh, and my va**na was getting regular work-outs on an almost-daily basis. Couldn't forget that tidbit since it was probably the most important. I thought if my va**na had to wait any longer for some action, she would have just got up and walked out of my underwear to find another pair of legs to sit between. ~ Tara Sivec

My name is Nathan, just twenty-three and given to the curation of stories. I listen, retain, then polish and release them over the fire at night, when the others hush and lean forward in their desire to hear of the past. They crave romance, particularly when autumn sets in and cold nights await them, and so I speak of Alice, and Bethany, and Sarah, and Val, and other dead women who all once had lustrous hair and never a bad word on their plump lips. I can remember this is not how they were; I knew them, I knew them! Only six years have passed and yet I mythologize them as if it is six thousand. I am not culpable. Language is changing, like the earth, like the sea. We live in lonely, fateful flux, outnumbered and outgrown. ~ Aliya Whiteley

He says the only people he ever really wants to meet for a drink somewhere are all either dead or unavailable. ~ J.D. Salinger

You said your cousin was a necromancer. You know how the natural necromancers operate?
They twisted the head off your favorite doll, stuffed a dead bird into it, and made it walk around. And then they were puzzled why you got upset. ~ Ilona Andrews

Now that Eponine is dead, my anger has died with her. ~ Laura L. Smith

Man has an almost infinite capacity for taking things and people for granted and thereby missing out on the pleasure of being grateful that things aren't worse and of praising and thereby lifting the spirits of others. ~ Aldous Huxley

Liberals have been wanted to change the voting system. I would say the only voting system needs to change is, voters must show proper ID, this will prevent the illegal immigrants and dead people to vote. ~ "Beta" Metani' Marashi

As a poet and writer in general I feel very grateful that I can just make a chapbook and that we don't have the expenses of filmmakers. ~ Ali Liebegott

In myths, the hero survives.
The evil is vanquished.
The world is set right.
Sometimes there are celebrations, and sometimes there are funerals.
The dead are buried. The living move on.
Nothing changes.
Everything changes.
This is a myth.
This is not a myth. ~ V.E. Schwab

Twinkle Twinkle little star.
You are nothing.
You've been dead for a thousand years. ~ Linda Barry

Whenever you leave cleared land, when you step from some place carved out, plowed, or traced by a human and pass into the woods, you must leave something of yourself behind. It is that sudden loss, I think, even more than the difficulty of walking through undergrowth, that keeps people firmly fixed to paths. In the woods, there is no right way to go, of course, no trail to follow but the law of growth. You must leave behind the notion that things are right. Just look around you. Here is the way things are. Twisted, fallen, split at the root. What grows best does so at the expense of what's beneath. A white birch feeds on the pulp of an old hemlock and supports the grapevine that will slowly throttle it. In the dead wood of another tree grow fungi black as devil's hooves. Overhead the canopy, tall pines that whistle and shudder and choke off light from their own lower branches. (from "Revival Road") ~ Louise Erdrich

I feel like I'm going to die,' he says.
'Could we talk for a few minutes before you die?'
'Only if you do it quietly.'
'I met this girl last night. I need your advice.'
'Come back later.'
'No. You might be dead. ~ Doug MacLeod

I digress, but here's the rub: The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory. The living, thank heaven, retain the ability to surprise and to disappoint. Your Hazel is alive, Waters, and you mustn't impose your will upon another's decision, particularly a decision arrived at thoughtfully. She wishes to spare you pain, and you should let her. You may not find young Hazel's logic persuasive, but I have trod through this vale of tears longer than you, and from where I'm sitting, she's not a lunatic. ~ John Green

In software, speed to market, speed to learning is really key. In hardware, if you screw it up, you're dead. So accuracy really matters. ~ Reid Hoffman

But I've been dead much longer than I lived, and I have had the chance to educate myself in that that I lacked in life. I wasn't stupid when I lived, just ignorant. There's a lot to learn, simply by watching the follies of the living. ~ Piers Anthony

You coming or not?" he repeated impatiently.
I was going to say no. But then, glancing at the curtains, I thought, it's probably no more spooky out there in that cemetery than it is here in my own bedroom! ~ R.L. Stine

If you ever get to the place where injustice doesn't bother you, you're dead. ~ Molly Ivins

I'd asked Tink about good fae when I got home. He'd been busy on my computer, creating If Daryl Dies We Riot memes. He'd genuinely appeared confused by my line of questioning. According to my pint-sized roommate, all fae were bad. There was no such thing as a good fae. Something had occurred to me while I'd watched him concentrate, the white glare from my computer lighting up his face. "Do you ever leave this house, Tink? Go anywhere?" He'd frowned up at me like I'd asked him why I should watch The Walking Dead. "Why would I leave? This place has everything I need, and if it doesn't, I can order it from Amazon." He'd paused. "Though, on second thought, we could use a live-in chef, because you can't cook for shit. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

No, this was Philly. Drunks here boo Santa and get in more trouble than a dog with an Easter basket, and like the dog, they usually end up either sick or dead. Ah yes, another lovely eve in the big city. ~ Kym Grosso

I've never liked urban myths. I've never liked pretending to believe in them; never understood why everyone else doesn't see straight through them. Why is it they've always happened to a friend of a friend - someone you've never met? Why does everyone smile and nod and pull the right faces, when they must know they're not true? Pointless. A waste of breath.
So I sneered at the myths about Scaderstone Pit. It was just an old quarry – nothing more. I never believed in the rumours of discarded dynamite. It had decayed, they said. It exploded at the slightest touch, had even blown someone's hand off. I shrugged off the talk of the toxic waste. It was dumped in the dead of night, they said. The canisters rusting away, leaking deadly poisons that could blind you, burn your lungs. I laughed at the ghost stories. You could hear the moans, they said, of quarrymen buried alive and never found. You could see their nightwalking souls, searching for their poor crushed bodies.
I didn't believe any of it – not one word. Now, after everything that's happened, I wonder whether I should've listened to those stories. Maybe then, these things would've happened to someone else, and I could've smiled and said they were impossible.
But this is not an urban myth. And it did not happen to someone else, but to me. I've set it down as best I can remember. Whether you believe it or not, is up to you. ~ Mikey Campling

Ancient and shriveled, many people said he hadn't noticed he was dead. He had simply got up to teach one day and left his body behind him in an armchair in front of the staffroom fire; his routine had not varied in the slightest since. Today ~ J.K. Rowling

I wanted nirvana," I explained. "I wanted death. I wanted release, any sort of release. And yet here I am, stuck in the material realm; neither enlightened, nor dead, nor free. And that hurts. It hurts so much." It ~ Joss Sheldon

Zombies are a fairly new addition to the cannon of monsterdom. Really, the modern zombie goes back just to the 'Night of the Living Dead.' There's a ton of material out there, but it seems like there's not a lot of diversity out there. ~ Steve Hockensmith

Although her heart had been dead for years, she clasped her hands over her breast to protect what rested underneath. ~ Montgomery Mahaffey

He stared dully at the desolate, cold road and the pale, dead night. Nothing was colder or more dead than his heart. He had loved an angel and now he despised a woman. ~ Gaston Leroux

Happy the soul to whom it is given to attain this life with Christ, to cleave with all one's heart to him whose beauty all the heavenly hosts behold forever, whose love inflames our love, the contemplation of whom is our refreshment, whose graciousness is our delight, whose gentleness fills us to overflowing, whose remembrance makes us glow with happiness, whose fragrance revives the dead, the glorious vision of whom will be the happiness of all the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. For he is the brightness of eternal glory, the splendour of eternal light, the mirror without spot. ~ St. Clare Of Assisi

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts ... .We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need - not all the time, surely, but from time to time - to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember - the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived. ~ Frederick Buechner

Only God can write a story that resonates not just in the power of the imagination or the heart or the mind, but in the very soul; only God can write a story that brings dead things to life. ~ Jared C. Wilson

Excuse me? Can I trouble you for a second..."
"Oh, hell..." Oliver raised his hand so Langham didn't speak. "Yes, love, carry on."He waited for the female to speak again, wondering what the bloody hell was about come their way.
"It's just that I'm in this flat and I can't get out."
"Um... Are you alive?"
"I have no idea. I just know I'm this flat and every time I think I'm dead, like now, I wake up again."
"Where is this flat?"
"See, that's the thing. Again, I have no idea..."
Oliver looked at Langham and smiled apologetically.
"Fuck it," Langham said. "You put me off my bloody lunch talking about men's cocks being torn off anyway. What's next? Lay it on me. ~ Sarah Masters

Welcome to the party," I say to them as more and more people gather to watch. "I'm telling my friends here that we have to fight together. We have to look after one another. This is about the end of the world, and we have to put aside our hate and fear of one another. If we can't learn to stand together by tomorrow, we'll all be lying together dead." - Lyric ~ Michael Buckley