Quotes from Jerry Garcia

Death comes at you no matter what you do in this life, and to equate drugs with death is a facile comparison.

I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.

Done time in the lock-up, done time on the streets. Done time on the upswing, and time in defeat. I know what I'm askin'. I know it's a lot. Just to say that I love you. Believe it or not.

Some things may work, but they definitely won't work every time. Some things may work at various times.

So it's one of those things where we have to - our problem is pacing ourselves and still reaching a large enough number of our audience. Because we don't want to burn the audience. And we don't want to be excluding anybody.

We're not uncomfortable with it, and we've already been through enough of the music business where I'm not really worried that commercial success is going to in some way - we're already past saving, you know what I mean? It's too late for us.

The process of selecting the tone on the guitar is an aesthetic process like any other, so you try a lot of different things.

Western ears have a hard time hearing anything that isn't in four-four time. A lot of cultures experience music in five-eight, for example, five-four.

Seems like everything lead up to this dayand it's just like every day that's ever been.Sun goin' up and then the sunit goin' down.

I don't think I've ever actually written from inspiration, actually had a song just go, 'Bing!' I only recall that happening to me twice - once was with 'Terrapin' and the other was 'Wharf Rat.' I mean, that's twice in a lifetime of writing!

If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.

Yeah, I think we have to. If we want our shows to be - if we want the quality of the shows to be good, and we want the energy to be high, and if we want to be in good enough physical shape to do them, and not exhaust ourselves on the road, and not get stale, we have to pace.

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.

If you are going to develop beast technology, you want to start by having cage technology. You want to make the rules first, you know.

So we are pretty convinced we don't want to play huge stadiums unless we can play them well.

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.

My kids seem to be more mature and older than I am now somehow. They've gotten ahead of me somehow. But they're very patient with me.

My guitar is a mutation between a classic Fender Stratocaster guitar, which I played for years, and a Gibson solid-body like an SG or a Les Paul. It contains all sounds of the basic classic rock n' roll guitars. It does what I want it to do.

What we do is as American as lynch mobs. America has always been a complex place.

I don't think that Slaughterhouse-Five was successful movie material. In fact, Vonnegut's books mostly I don't feel are movie material.

Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

Stuff that's hidden and murky and ambiguous is scary because you don't know what it does.

If you're able to enjoy something, to devote your life to it or a reasonable amount of time and energy, it will work out for you.

The satisfaction of producing a work of art is the thing of getting off on it on some level.