Robbie Robertson Quotes

You don't stumble upon your heritage. It's there, just waiting to be explored and shared.

Give us the strength, give us the wisdom, and give us tomorrow.

I don't want to be one of those people saying, 'Remember when things were better?'

I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.

We need to have a taste factor in our life. It isn't about what's popular; it's about what's really good.

Music should never be harmless.

It would be nice to abandon the verse-chorus-bridge structure completely, and make it so none of these things are definable. ... Make up new names for them. Instead of a bridge, you can call it a highway, or an overpass. ... Music should never be harmless. ... I remember from my earliest years, people speaking, you know, in a certain kind of rhythm and telling stories and sharing experiences in a way that was different in Indian country than it was other places. And I was really struck by this and obviously very affected by it, because it's always come out in my songs.

Bob Dylan is as influential as any artist that there has been.

If I can play one note and make you cry, then that's better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes.

You fog the mind, you stir the soul.

There is an extraordinary collaborative spirit when you are learning and growing.

By the time I was 13, I was the only one in London, Ontario, who knew how to play rock n' roll.

There's a thing that has happened in the U.S. where the spirit has been beaten so badly and so you feel no unity in the voice of the country.

Say a prayer for the lost generation, who spin the wheel out of desperation.

Boy, do I got some stories to tell.

I wanted to develop a guitar style where phrases and lines get there just in the nick of time, like with Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper. Subtleties mean so much, and there is a stunning beauty in them.

I don't like overt traditionalism.

I love the idea of having a kid who says, 'Yeah, of course I knew about Billie Holiday and Johnny Cash when I was nine years old.'

You never know what could be interesting tomorrow.

At a young age I thought, 'Wow, that fiddle thing, that's pretty cool. That mandolin is great. These drums, I like these drums ' They were Indian drums. And I was saying, 'But that guitar. That guitar. Girls are going to like that guitar.'

When people get together that come from different musical backgrounds, a lot of times there's is a good ... it's very enjoyable to say somebody, let me turn you on to some things, and the other person does the same thing. And they play you stuff that maybe you weren't that familiar with and likewise.

Time is not kind to everything.

Most of my younger Native American friends are not in any way looking for sympathy, and they're not looking to lay guilt on anybody. They have their dignity, and they do what they do.

Musical revolutions, I don't know how many I've been through.

People go through periods when things are dark and cloudy, and they talk dark and cloudy.