Neil Young quotes:

With Crazy Horse, it's all one big, growing, smoldering sound, and I'm part of it. It's like gliding, or some sort of natural surfing.

Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record.

I'm not into organized religion. I'm into believing in a higher source of creation, realizing we're all just part of nature.

I don't think that one day really relates to the next day in life.

To protect our freedoms, it seems we're going to have to relinquish some of our freedoms for a short period of time.

Rock and roll is here to stay.

It's better to burn out, than to fade away.

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.

I was just 20 years old when I wrote Broken Arrow.

I don't like war. I particularly don't like the celebration of war, which I think the administration is a little bit guilty of.

I feel like I could be likened to an old hound circling on a rug for the last five years.

Give a hippie too much money and anything can happen.

Studios are passe for me. I'd rather play in a garage, in a truck, or a rehearsal hall, a club, or a basement.

It's cool to go places where working people are happy.

Commitments are one of the worst things to have in the music business. They're very annoying.

As I get older, I get smaller. I see other parts of the world I didn't see before. Other points of view. I see outside myself more.

The '60s was one of the first times the power of music was used by a generation to bind them together.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

I don't like to be labeled, to be anything. I've made the mistake before myself of labeling my music, but it's counter-productive.

There is a town in north Ontario, With dream comfort memory to spare, And in my mind I still need a place to go, All my changes were there. Blue, blue windows behind the stars, Yellow moon on the rise, Big birds flying across the sky, Throwing shadows on our eyes.

When the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, I hate these people with the pins in their ears. I said, Thank God, something got their attention.

I think I'm going to be making country records for as long as I can see into the future. It's much more down-home and real.

We need to spread out now in the universe. I think in 100 years we'll be living on other planets.

I don't think there is one president that's come down the line that hasn't done something good somewhere.

When people start asking you to do the same thing over and over again, that's when you know you're way too close to something that you don't want to be near.

I can get away with saying a lot of ideas that are young and naive. I'm liberated.

I like it if people enjoy what I'm doing, but if they don't, I also like it. I sometimes really like aggravating people with what I do. I think it's good for them.

The devil fools with the best laid plans.

All I'm doing is writing it down and putting it in a cadence. Once I get into a cadence, then why should I even stop and wonder what it is? You can do that for the rest of your life, but when it's coming out, you don't want to stop it.

I'm not into this judgmental, religious-right kind of thing.

Remember when you used to watch TV in the Sixties and you'd see Perry Como in a cashmere sweater? That's what rock 'n' roll is becoming. It's your parents' music.

It's a cold bowl of chili when love lets you down.

I don't know if I'll find the cinnamon girl. I think I already did, but I'm still singing, who knows.

Most people think it's the other way around: that time is going faster and we're doing less. But really time seems to be going faster because we're cramming so much into it.

My dad passed away...and suddenly I found myself at the top of the tree and looking at the sky instead of at my mom and dad.

Sailing heart-ships through broken harbors out on the waves of the night, still the searcher must ride the dark horse racing alone in his fright.

That's a defining moment, there, when someone plays an instrument that everyone relates to around the planet.

There was a band playing in my head, And I felt like getting high

Went looking for faith on the forest floor, and it showed up everywhere. In the sun, and the water, and the falling leaves, the falling leaves of time.

The cutthroat avenues of rock 'n' roll, I am fed up with. I don't want anything to do with it.

What's female beauty, but an air divine, thro' which the mind's all gentle graces shine? They, like the sun, irradiate all between; the body charms because the soul is seen.

The music world has taken a huge dump, so maybe there's a connection. So if Apple decided to do this, maybe they do their own version ... whatever they want to do it's a home run for music. Unless they screw it up, and try to put something on it so that they can own it - I'm calling it out, proprietary formats are not a good thing.

I don't like the American media - particularly Fox.

Some get stoned, some get strange, but sooner or later it all gets real.

Did He give me the gift of love to say who I could choose? When God made me did He give me the gift of voice so some could silence me? Did he give me the gift of vision not knowing what I might see? Did he give me the gift of compassion to help my fellow man?

I live for playing live. All my records are live, since After the Gold Rush, with the exception of Trans and the vocals on Landing on Water.

In a Ramada Inn near the grapevine, they stop to rest for the night. Traveling down south, looking for good times. Visiting old friends feels right.

Only love can break your heart.

I want to live, I want to give, I've been a miner for a heart of gold.

Holding back is so close to stealing.

All these people talking about morality should just take a walk downtown. They don't want to go downtown because instantly they see homeless people and they don't want to.

If I could go back in time and see any band, It would be Link Wray and the Raymen.

I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream

Of course you have to support the troops. They're just kids. They're doing for their country what's expected of them.

Keep it moving. Don't hoard. Money's no good, get rid of it. Turn it into people doing things. Turn it into jobs. Turn it into happiness...The more people I employ, the happier I am - that means my money's goin' into other people's lives, and if I can give 'em something to create that they can be happy with, that's great.

I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.

Learning from other people is what music is all about.

I think in some ways - only in some ways - but in some ways, rock and roll has let me down. It really doesn't leave you a way to grow old gracefully and continue to work.

I have a lot faith in the younger generation of music lovers. Youth isn't living in the past; if somebody tells them that there's something better than what they have, they're going to check it out. And if they like it, they're going to get it. I'm not worried about the youth. Young people aren't just looking back, they are also looking forward.

The true martial artist yields to the weak, while withstanding the strong.

Took out Skinny Minnie, Long Tall Sally, and Short Fat Fanny, but I'm kinda fonda Wanda.

Mother Goose, she's on the skids. Sure ain't happy, neither are the kids.

Music lovers always want to hear the best. It's about freedom of choice, we supply the music.

Nothing is perfect in God's perfect plan.

You know how the press is: If I mention one mistake, that's the only thing that bothers me unless I mention all the other ones.

A young man of pleasure is a man of pains.

Ain't singing for Pepsi, ain't singing for Coke, I don't sing for nobody, makes me look like a joke.

Steve Jobs was a digital pioneer, but when he went home, he listened to vinyl.

It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. [...] That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.

We have a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder gentler machine gun hand.

Long, flat expanses of professionalism bother me. I'd rather have a band that could explode at any time.

I'm free to give my love, but you're not the one I'm thinking of.

I'm not waiting for times to change I want to live like a free-roaming soul on the highway of our love.

Hey, hey, my, my, rock and roll will never die.

The rockets and the satellites, spaceships that we're creating now, we're pollinating the universe.

I don't think I'm a thorn in the industry, I'm just another part of it.

Though we rush ahead to save our time, we are only what we feel

It doesn't mean that much to me to mean that much to you.

Think I'll roll another number for the road

I've always been better moving than I am standing still.

I see a woman in the night with a baby in her hand, under an old street light near a garbage can.

I see country music, I see people who take care of their own. You've got 75 year-old guys on the road. That's what I was put here to do, y'know, so I wanna make sure I surround myself with people who are gonna take care of me. 'Cause I'm in it for the long run.

It's going to take a lot of love to make things work out right.

Love is a rose But you better not pick it. It only grows When it's on the vine. Handful of thorns And you'll know you missed it. You lose your love When you say the word MINE.

My music isn't anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock'n'roll, and it has an urgency to it.

As you go through life, you've got to see the valleys as well as the peaks.

I'll never be Bob Dylan. He's the master.

I don't look at a knife the way I used to. I'm more aware of what it is. I think twice. This is a key finger. It's in every chord.

Something comes along and you have to jump on and do it. You can't stop until it's done.

Live music is better.

The thing about my music is, there really is no point.

One new feature or fresh take can change everything.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the '70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the '80s, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the '90s. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

It's a blue album, but it's not a blues album. I'm not pretending all of a sudden now I'm blues.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

... I have no idea who's steering, and I don't really care .. I just keep going whatever the inclination is ... there are threads that are continuous and hold everything together and a major thread is country music ...

... my songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way ... they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio...

[ Vietnam War] brought the people together and made the '60s like they were. The youth were very unified against the status quo - against the old line and the new old line. It's the same exact thing today.

A job is never truly finished. It just reaches a stage where it can be left on its own for a while.

A little love and affection in everything you do will make the world a better place with or without you.

A lot of people that buy vinyl today don't realise that they're listening to CD masters on vinyl and that's because the record companies have figured out that people want vinyl, And they're only making CD masters in digital, so all the new products that come out on vinyl are actually CDs on vinyl, which is really nothing but a fashion statement.

All the things I used to count on to get my music out there - record companies, they're all gone. And radio stations, they're gone - they're completely controlled by the government. If they're not controlled by the government, they're controlled by a programmer who's controlled by the government. Mainstream radio is suspect. You can't trust it.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

And as an afterthought, this too must be told: Some people have taken pure bullshit and turned it into gold.

And you can't get away from a mirror if you stand in front of it all the time, right. But if you step away from it, you don't notice it any more. And that's what the stage is like for me. See, an image becomes meaningless in as much as it's always temporary.

Are you negative in a world that never stops turning on you?

As important as the funds are, the vision is the greatest gift.

As soon as you start preaching, nobody wants to hear you because then you're a jerk.

As soon as you start talking about mystique, you have none.

Bad news is just an excuse.

Being a musician enables a person to bend the notes and express things that are inside you, no matter what.

Being sued by your own record company, that's even better than receiving a Grammy

Cocaine eyes won't hide your face.

Corporations don't have children. They don't have feelings or souls. They don't depend on uncontaminated water, clean air, or healthy food to survive. They are beholden to one thing - the bottom line.

Crazy friends provide for crazy times, and such crazy times we're had.

Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them. And I try to forgive them anyway I can.

Don't let it bring you down. It's only castles burning, find someone who's turning, and you will come around.

Don't think. The worst songs I've ever written happen when I think.

Down by the river, I shot my baby dead.

Earth is a flower and it's pollinating.