65 Quotes by Loudon Wainwright III

It’s hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn’t own water skis or a snorkel.

Los Angeles, the sun shines a lot, and it’s blue, and there’s palm trees; it’s a bit like Sydney, I guess, but the underbelly is a vicious, mean, cruel, awful place.

I was a smoker for years. Occasionally I slip and have a cigarette. Remarkably, my voice has held up. I’m grateful, obviously. But I don’t gargle with honey and ground-up bird eggs. I have no secrets.

I think I’m the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.

Geoff Muldaur was and is one of my musical heroes. When I listen to him sing and play, I can hear the coal mine, the cotton field, and last, but certainly foremost, the boy’s boarding school.

When you make a record, you listen to it literally hundreds of times. When it’s done and you can’t do anything else, I never listen to my records.

I hated the idea that I would be like my father. Which is one of the reasons I decided I didn’t want to be a writer and wanted to be an actor instead. I wanted to go in a total different direction. But, of course, I ended up being a writer anyway.

After a war, after a concentration camp, I find it’s not too difficult to be happy.

I have travelled and been pretty much a one man operation for most of my career, and I think it’ll continue to be that way.