David Crosby Quotations

I've always been a very careful sailor. I know, me and being careful - doesn't really sound right, does it? But when I sail, I take it seriously and take along spares for everything. You have to be careful when you're 1,500 miles from land. There's no one you can call. You're on your own.

I don't like greed, I don't like ignorance. I really don't like anger. But I love love.

When I was 11 years old, my parents wanted me to do something besides get in trouble. So they enrolled me in sailing classes at the Sea Shell Association in Santa Barbara, Calif. From the moment I climbed into that 8-foot dinghy in 1952, I knew instinctively what to do and sensed I had done it before.

I think music is a lifting force, I think love is the lifting force in the human condition. I think you see someone loving on their child, and it moves you, and you can't help it.

I don't collect the way other people do. Some people collect rare guitars, like, 'I have a '54 Strat worth $50,000.' And I don't collect the way Nash does. Nash has Duane Allman's guitar and Johnny Cash's guitar. I bought guitars because they sounded good. I played them, they sounded unbelievably good, and I couldn't resist.

Sailing became one of the mainstreams of my life. I suppose my father was an influence. I remember seeing a photo of him at home sailing a big boat to Bermuda in his 20s. I still have it.

Describing Woodstock as the "big bang," I think that's a great way to describe it, because the important thing about it wasn't how many people were there or that it was a lot of truly wonderful music that got played.

I'm older than I'd like and I'm creaky, but I'm doing alright.

I am having so much fun performing, I feel almost guilty. I think, my God, I hope no one comes and busts me for this.

I do see things that are funny on the net. I Googled myself the other day and found out that I was worth $250m, and that I was the highest-paid guy in show business! I wish so hard it was true. It is, of course, the complete opposite. I'm neither rich nor do I make a lot of money.

Norah Jones is a breath of fresh air. Norah Jones can sing and play. She's got some talent. I was totally ecstatic that that girl got noticed, because she's wonderful.

I'm an inveterate bookstore wanderer. I read constantly, so I love a good bookstore. I can't help it.

I gave up bread, and I've lost a bunch of weight, which is very good because I'm diabetic.

The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?

My songs emerge from my life, or wherever they do, unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own.

Being a hippy was the most natural thing in the world to me.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

I gave a Collings dreadnought to a young guitar player in the Valley where I live because he didn't have a good acoustic, and he's a terrific player.

I love Stephen Stills and Neil Young dearly. We talk all the time. We see each other.

There are a lot of people who look great but can't sing.

I started singing in coffeehouses when I was still in high school, in Santa Barbara. I took a job washing dishes and busing tables in the coffeehouse, so I could be there, and would beg permission to sing harmony with the guy who was singing onstage. That was the first time I ever got on a stage in front of people.

I come from a school of people, folk singers, and the tradition there is troubadours, and you're carrying a message. Admittedly, our job is partly just to make you boogie, just make you want to dance. Part of our job is to take you on a little voyage, tell you a story.But part of our job is to communicate the way a town crier did: It's 12:00 and all is well, or it's 11:30 and the whole Congress is sold. It's part of the job.

When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.

I use a lot of tunings because I listen to a lot of jazz.

I've met Bill Clinton, Obama a couple of times... I certainly didn't meet George Bush, and wouldn't want to.

We've all been friends for a long time. And when the vibe's good we really have a lot of fun with each other.

We know we're grown-up guys, and we have families and stuff, but we've taken that as a positive source of art, rather than as a detriment. You know, how we feel about the stuff that we've learned over the lives that we've had, and how we feel about our families. That's where we're writing from, and it's a good thing.

When did I decide to go into business? Well, it wasn't a business, when I decided. It was simply a need to sing.

CSNY is a little like putting seven pounds of stuff in a three pound bag.

I do like to smoke pot. I think it's good.

All wars would end immediately if the various chiefs of state dropped a little LSD.

The greatest thing is the internet and that means that anybody, you have just as much access as I do. And you can make your little tape and work on it and work on it until you got it the way you want it. And then you can put it on the net. And if it's any damn good somebody's gonna notice. That's happened over and over again now. To me that's good. That's good access that isn't controlled by the companies. I think that's a great thing.

While I was an addict, I didn't write anything. I didn't have the attention span or the will.

I'd have to say that Kenny White has earned a place among my favorite singer/songwritersand particularly, lyricists. As we say in the trade “he goes deep.” A true wordsmith AND musician who reveals a fine sense of humor, as well. Put on your headphones and listen carefully.

It's hard to bullshit the ocean. It's not listening, you know what I mean.

"It can't happen here" is number one on the list of famous last words.

The easiest way to get laid by a girl, or get rid of her, is to write a song about her.

I produced her first album, and I was breaking up with her at the time. That was not comfortable. Falling in love with Joni Mitchell is a bit like falling into a cement mixer!

Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.

Generally we don't really consciously do it as a purpose-driven thing. ... It's really just a response to life.

The fact is that all the recording science and technology in the world is no substitute for a good song or for real feeling. Music is about feeling and if there isn't any genuine feeling, if the song isn't about anything that anyone gives a damn about, there's nothing you can do. All the technique that exists won't make it any good; it'll just make it technological. All the production values you add won't do anything except make it glossy.

My songs emerge unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own...We have, all of us, over the years, written things that responded to the world as it slapped us in the face. Me and Nash, singing "To the Last Whale" and "Find the Cost of Freedom". Stills coming up with "For What It's Worth". These came right out of the news. People have accused us of taking stances and the truth is we don't.

Right away I thought I'd been hit by a hand grenade ... her (Joni Mitchells') voice, those words ... she nailed me to the back wall with two-inch spikes... I promptly fell in love with her...

My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.

Jimi Hendrix could play better than our best guys and he did it while he was dancing while being completely outrageous.

Sometimes the entire thing comes out in one burst. Sometimes you hack away at a thing for years before you get something that satisfies you.

I want to go to Africa and find a really great hotel with good food right above a water hole where I can sit, have breakfast, and just watch the elephants play in the water.

After all the time we [people] spent saying look, war is a stupid way to solve stuff - oh, you're not trying to solve stuff. You're trying to make money.

I want to look at myself the way I do on purpose, because if you aggrandize and try to look at yourself the way a fan does or the way a reviewer does or the way - God bless them, they all got a right to, everybody's got a right to an opinion about it.

[Calling you a] star is just a trick. It's like a straw man thing. They [people] set you up just to knock you over. It's bull. You avoid it, I avoid it.

I believe in this country [the USA], I love this country, I believe in the idea of this country, and this country is an idea.

I love music. I love making songs. I feel like I've been given a path where I can contribute, where I can protest if somebody does something really obviously wrong or inhuman right in front of me, where I can make a difference. Where I can most especially elevate, make you happy, elevate the condition, elevate the thing.

The stupid thing I incorrectly believed for a long time is that I believed for a long time that some politicians could sometimes tell the truth.

Alec Guinness classed up that movie [Star Wars]. Nobody else in that movie knew how to act. Nobody else had a clue of what they were doing. The young guy was a complete loss, absolutely couldn't act his way out of a bag, but Alec Guinness carried that movie. He was such a class act that it elevated the film to be a joy to watch.

The movie I've seen the most times, boy, that's a tough one. It would have to be a toss-up between Apocalypse Now and the first Star Wars. I think the first Star Wars.

There's a site on the internet that swears up and down that I'm worth $46 million and that I'm one of the most highly paid and richest guys in show business. I really wish it was true! Then there's those where it's like my mother was raped by a martian and that kind of thing. National Enquirer-type stuff. They just make it up.

There has never been a communism that worked. They were all dictatorships or oligarchies, every single one.

Neil Young played Helpless, and by the time he finished, we were asking him if we could join his band

I write very sporadically. I write sometimes three things in a week and then nothing for a year. I make a space for it but I don't push it. They just come and they come.

You tend to write as you get older about family love more than you write about romantic love or ooh baby. ... The stuff that you want to celebrate about humanity has always been there and probably always will be.

Largely I write from life. ... I write from what happens to me. Mostly about love. People notice the other stuff more but I write mostly about love.

I have a pretty clear picture of the whole weight of my life, and there are things that I've done that are good, and I'm proud of them. There are things that I'm really not proud of, and that they, you have to look at me with a perspective, and I try really hard to do that, to keep from thinking I'm cool and ever so smart.

I don't think being angry is useful or healthy, and usually when I get angry, my brain just goes right out the window. Boom, as soon as the adrenaline hits, instant stupid. Just add water and mix.

I'm not givin' in an inch to fear.

I think ideas are still the most powerful things on the planet, and music is a great way to transmit them.

Don't waste the time. Time is the final currency, man. Not money, not power - it's time.

I've been given a gift [musical talent] - don't misuse it. I spent a lot of time just wasting that talent, not treasuring it, not valuing it, not respecting it, just taking it for granted. That was a hard lesson to learn. It doesn't come for free. Don't do that. Treasure it, respect it, treat it as a responsibility that you've been given, and enjoy the hell out of it.

I would do a Byrds tour or a Byrds record in a minute. I miss that band now. I've tried to convince Roger over and over to do it, but he's not interested. Music isn't something you can legislate into being.

I get egotistical about things where I can do something well - for example, my singing. Most other things, I don't have the wherewithal to back it up.

His parents that raised him, who are two very sweet people, wrote us a letter, and also James met our keyboard player in Crosby, Stills, Nash, who's a dear friend of mine. And that was the way that actually got him on the phone to me.

I think this is just an outrage. I think people feel defeated.

We got glimpses into their value systems and their reasons they do things that nobody else has gotten. It was pay dirt. It was seriously good stuff.

VH1 and MTV turned suddenly from being a musical experience to a theatrical one. It became how you looked, which is what put Britney Spears - who's as deep as a birdbath - in front of Joni Mitchell.

It was probably the strangest thing that's ever happened in the world,

Their homes are gone; their businesses swamped. They wonder what the future holds,

I love voyaging - the longest has been 3,000 miles to Hawaii. I've also spent weeks all over the Caribbean.

Good music is an end in and of itself. When you're doing it, it's really the most fun part.