Neil Young citations

“It's better to burn out than to fade away.”

“I think if you don't have some obsession in your life, you're dead.”

“One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.”

“But only love can break your heart
Try to be sure right from the start
Yes only love can break your heart
What if your world should fall apart?”

“You can really learn a lot that way,
It will change you in the middle of the day,
Though your confidence may be shattered,
It doesn't matter.”

“You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
Where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.”

“When you dance,
Do your senses tingle?
Then take a chance?
In a trance,
While the lonely mingle
With circumstance?”

“If you follow every dream, you might get lost.”

“Keep on rockin' in the free world.”

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

“And the world on a string doesn't mean a thing.”

“In my little box
At the top of the stair
With my Indian rug
And a pipe to share.”

“We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man.
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand.
We got department stores
And toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
For the ozone layer.
Got a man of the people,
Says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
Got roads to drive.”

“Shelter me from the powder
And the finger
Cover me with the thought
That pulled the trigger
Think of me
As one you'd never figured
Would fade away so young
With so much left undone.”

“A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night.
You see us together,
Chasing the moonlight,
My cinnamon girl.”

“I've been looking for a woman to save my life
Not to beg or to borrow
A woman with the feeling of losing once or twice.”

“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.”

“Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.”

“Oh tell me where the answer lies,
Is it in the notebook behind your eyes?”

“Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.”

“There you stood on the edge of your feather
Expecting to fly.
While I laughed, I wondered whether
I could wave goodbye
Knowin' that you'd gone.”

“I'm not going back to Woodstock for a while,
Though I long to hear that lonesome hippie smile,
I'm a million miles away from that helicopter day,
No, I don't think I'll be goin' back that way.”

“Well, people let me tell you, it sent a chill up and down my spine,
When I picked up the telephone and heard that he'd died out on the mainline.”

“Think I'll roll another number for the road,
I feel able to get under any load,
Though my feet aren't on the ground,
I've been standing on the sound
Of some open-hearted people going down.”

“I have seen you in the movies,
And in those magazines at night.
I saw you on the barstool,
When you held that glass so tight.”

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

“Please take my advice, please take my advice,
Open up the tired eyes,
Open up the tired eyes.”

“I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
For a heart of gold.
I've been in my mind,
It's such a fine line
That keeps me searching
For a heart of gold.
And I'm getting old.”

“He tried to do his best but he could not.”