David Crosby Quotes

In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write.

There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

And for so long, I had thought if I was going to write a song, or get "into" something, I had to at least smoke a joint or something. And that didn't work anymore. Once I was fairly well cleaned out, even a little bit of a drug getting into my work threw me off kilter.

You can be creative and not addictive, or addictive and not creative. Most addicted people do not produce anything of remarkable note.

I could not finish the rest of the tours the band had planned. I was replaced by Matt Cameron. The next years of my life were about recovery, healing, and right living. I never lost the need to create.

Until I went to rehab, I didn't understand what it did.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

The idea of writer's block or not having inspiration is totally terrifying to me.

In '85, I went through rehab and I wasn't ready. If you're not ready, you're not ready. You don't want to hear the truth, and you're gonna keep doing what you keep doing.

There was a reason my first substantial role after rehab was to play a maniac whose personal story ended badly. I knew what it was like to go those dark places. I played a guy who died as a result of his abuse.

I spent a year in a 12-step program, really committed, because I could not believe what had happened - that I might have killed myself.

I have no discipline, which is a horrible flaw for any writer. Once I'm well started on a project, though, then I'm addicted to it all day long. When it's done, I collapse and have to really kick myself to start a new one.

I was 14 years old when my dad went into rehab, and he stayed there for a long time - I don't know, 10 or 12 years maybe. He first was there as a resident, as someone trying to get sober, and it took a long time; and then he stayed on helping people get their GED.

When I first went up to see my editor, I was with my agent, and my editor said, 'Well, what have you been doing all these years?' And my agent said, 'He's been in recovery. From his childhood.'

Around 2001, I went to rehab in Arizona, and I started to see what was going on and how the past affected me. I started to get a grip on it. But over the next decade, I reverted to the behaviour I used to protect myself when I was young - being mindless, being defeatist and full of bravado.

I'm not really worried about writer's block.

I, myself, have not infrequently come across recovering addicts years later that I had given up on. It is like seeing a ghost come to life. The transformations can be astonishing.

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.

I wasn't taking drugs or drinking. I was working and working and working. But I wasn't writing anything.

But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard.

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

I wrote my songs despite the fact that I was a drunk, not because of it.