I got really, really sick with a spinal infection that put me in a hospital for a couple of months, and it was touch and go. I had my guitar with me, and as soon as I got well enough to play, there was nothing else to do in that hospital. The nurses would come in and request songs.

A song doesn't happen as a whole verse; it happens linearly, line by line, almost word by word, phrase by phrase. And if each phrase, each line, has a proper emotional feel and connects to the line before it and the line after it, the song will be doing what it should be doing.

When I got out of the hospital, it was one of those classic things - you're looking death in the eye, and it changes you. I thought, I ought to go back on the road.

Robert Hunter Quotes