Roy Harper Quotes

I got into trad jazz, then modern jazz, then avant-garde jazz, between the ages of 16 to 18.

When I was 15, I was wearing sandals and corduroys, Guernsey, striped pullover, a beard that was hardly there, shades and a beret, and the goal was hanging out.

I regret that I’ve never actually managed to be inspired enough to get into anything else, and I should’ve been, I really should have been, because the piano can be a wonderful instrument. But I’m afraid that my inspiration is just purely on the words… and it’s gonna stay there.

I’m an amalgam of the 19th-century romantics and the beat poets.

I wanted to modernize music, but more than that, to completely modernize people’s attitudes towards life in general.

At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It’s like therapy for me, because it exposes what I’m really thinking.

I’d just like to prove to myself that I’m all here and all together and can get the best out of myself. I’d also like to prove that to a couple of other people.

What is our destiny? Does it matter? Is it bound up with ‘our’ planet? In my opinion, yes.

It’s fantastic to put your hands in the earth. I enjoy spending my time in heaven here. I don’t care what you say, this is my heaven.

What I lack in height, I make up for in wicked good hearing.

I’ve seen such things as you would not believe. I’ve seen motorbikes driven down hotel corridors – and had a go myself.

In some ways, I lament the introduction of civilisation on such a huge scale, because it has given us a lot of room to abuse each other, which we continue to do.

Every song has a bouquet, which is the music. If you can put words with something that is really apt, then you’ve done it.

Remember, this was a world that was still ethnically separated. I was thirteen and ignorant of the social situation in America, but I felt these records were better than what my own culture was turning out.

I’m careful, controlled, bodily conservative: if someone offered me a pill I’d only ever take a half.

Id just like to prove to myself that Im all here and all together and can get the best out of myself. Id also like to prove that to a couple of other people.

I was never really a bone fide member of the folk scene.

I’ve taken a stand against religion for as long I’ve been able to write and think.

I’m attending to my legacy, making sure that it travels the universe in the best shape I can get it into. For as long as I’m alive, I’ll still be its interpreter.

I was determined if I was going to become a superstar it would be on my terms. I’ve had that ethic since the beginning.