Everytime I think about back home, it’s cool and breezy. I wish that I could be there right now just passing time.

Everybody seems to wonder what it’s like down here. [But] I gotta get away from this day-to-day running around – everybody knows this is nowhere.

I see country music, I see people who take care of their own. You 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. Willie Nelson’s 54 years-old* and he’s a happy man, doing what he loves to do. I can’t think of one rock and roller like that. So what am I gonna do?

- Neil Young in “Legend of a Loner”, an interview with Adam Swetting in Melody Maker; 7th September 1985 [source]

* this age was true in 1985. Willie Nelson’s date of birth is 29th April 1933 – so get that calculator out!

I was chopping down a palm tree, when a friend dropped by to ask if I would feel less lonely if he helped me swing the axe. I said “No, it’s not a case of being lonely we have here – I’ve been working on this palm tree for eighty-seven years!”

He said “Go get lost!” – and walked towards his Cadillac; I chopped down the palm tree, and it landed on his back.

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. If you’re gonna rock you better burn out, ‘cos that’s the way they wanna see you. They wanna see you right on the edge where you’re glowing, right on the living edge, which is where young people are. They’re discovering themselves, and rock and roll is young people’s music. I think that’s a reality, and I still love rock and roll and I love to play the songs in my set that are sort of rock and roll, but I don’t see a future for me there.

- Neil Young in “Legend of a Loner”, an interview with Adam Swetting in Melody Maker; 7th September 1985 [source]

I even go as far as to think that in the plan of things, the natural plan of things, that the rockets and the satellites, spaceships, that we’re creating now are really… we’re pollinating, as a universe, and it’s part of the universe. Earth is a flower and it’s pollinating.

- Neil Young in “Legend of a Loner”, an interview with Adam Swetting in Melody Maker; 7th September 1985 [source]

All of a sudden she was on my mind: I wasn’t ready for her kind. And she was taking her time.

I was always about two or three years behind everybody. There was nothin’ new about white bucks by the time I started wearing white bucks. They were like, out. No one was wearing them. That’s when I got mine. They were enough of a statement to piss people off. They set me apart.

- Neil Young in an interview with Jimmy McDonough; specific date unknown

Reference: McDonough, J. (2002). Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography. UK: Vintage Press. “Mr. Blue and Mr. Red”, p.62.

Revenge of the Nerd? Great. [...] Because to achieve nerd status with only homegrown knowledge of nerddom is a fuckin’ great accomplishment – and I’m proud.

- Neil Young in an interview with Jimmy McDonough, in response to McDonough’s statement that many see Neil’s childhood as a classic case of “Revenge of the Nerd”; specific date unknown

Reference: McDonough, J. (2002). Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography. UK: Vintage Press. “Mr. Blue and Mr. Red”, p.62.

There’s one guy in class that nobody fuckin’ likes, that is a total weirdo. I just have to have some conversations with this person, y’know?

- Neil Young in an interview with Jimmy McDonough; specific date unknown

Reference: McDonough, J. (2002). Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography. UK: Vintage Press. “Mr. Blue and Mr. Red”, p.61-62.