Arlo Guthrie

Basically, I think you need two things to get by in this world: a sense of humor and the ability to laugh when your ego is destroyed.

— Arlo Guthrie

For one minute, think of the last guy. Nobody's got it worse than that guy. Nobody in the whole world. He's so alone in the world, that he doesn't even have a street to lay in for a truck to run him over.

— Arlo Guthrie

Be serious. Folk songs are serious. That's what Pete Seeger told me. "Arlo, I only wanna tell you one thing. Folk songs are serious." And I said "Right."

— Arlo Guthrie

It's about the time I was riding my Motorcycle, going down a mountain road at 150 miles an hour, playing my guitar.

— Arlo Guthrie

We went back, afterward, after the show was over that night, I took my kids backstage and said, "You know what? I know my dad's songs..."

— Arlo Guthrie

I froze in time! And I thought "My God......I'm free!"

— Arlo Guthrie

You can get anything you want at Alice's RestaurantYou can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

— Arlo Guthrie

This song is called "Alice's Restaurant". It's about Alice. And the Restaurant. But Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song. That's why I called this song "Alice's Restaurant."

— Arlo Guthrie

Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And living in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Having all that room, seeing as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.

— Arlo Guthrie

We came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw ours down.

— Arlo Guthrie

I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the scene of the crime, there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it.

— Arlo Guthrie

And they took twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography.

— Arlo Guthrie

...And it was about four or five hours later that Alice — Remember Alice? It's a song about Alice.

— Arlo Guthrie

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning.

— Arlo Guthrie

Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers!

— Arlo Guthrie

I went over to the Sargent, said, "Sargent, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sitting here on the bench, I mean I'm sitting here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug."

— Arlo Guthrie

Along with a sense of humor, my songs have to be sincere, and they have to be sung from a position of inner conviction.

— Arlo Guthrie

At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history.

— Arlo Guthrie

At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history.

— Arlo Guthrie