Deadhead Quotes

Yo! Deadheads," he yelled, waving his sword to taunt them. "Nice try, but you're messing with Benny-freaking-Imura, zombie killer. Booyah!

Zombies, deadheads, corpsicles. What's the difference? They don't care. They don't have feelings to hurt.

i was really into communal living and we were all / such free spirits, crossing the country we were / nomads and artists and no one ever stopped / to think about how the one working class housemate / was whoring to support a gang of upper middle class / deadheads with trust fund safety nets and connecticut / childhoods, everyone was too busy processing their isms / to deal with non-issues like class....and it’s just so cool / how none of them have hang-ups about / sex work they’re all real / open-minded real / revolutionary you know / the legal definition of pimp is / one who lives off the earnings of / a prostitute, one or five or / eight and i’d love to stay and / eat some of the stir fry i’ve been cooking / for y’all but i’ve got to go fuck / this guy so we can all get stoned and / go for smoothies tomorrow, save me / some rice, ok?

I never deadhead the coneflowers, though, for there are few things more beautiful than the sight of a goldfinch still wearing his summer finery and riding a coneflower tossing in the autumn wind.

But the Grateful Dead, as the fanatic fans point out, are a way of life: someone else's. Twentieth-century teenagers, especially American ones, have been brilliant at creating their own culture, their own music, clothes, and point(s) of view. It's sad and fraudulent that the kind of wholesale worship of some historical way of life has settled over so many young people, infecting them like a noxious gas... I love the dead--grew up in the thrall of Shakespeare and Hank Williams and James Dean. And I adore the Rolling Stones. But there's a difference between cherishing "Satisfaction" and wearing Keith Richards' hair while doing Keith Richards' drugs. I don't want to be Keith Richards. I wanna be me. Not--like the neo-Deadheads--just another extra in an overblown costume drama about something that wasn't that interesting the first time around.

She made her way up the front walk, slowly so her free hand could stroke the peonies' bountiful pink blooms framing the Murdochs' front garden. Nellie murmured sweet lullabies to them as she did, nurturing the flowers the way she would a child of she were ever lucky enough to have one. Turning onto the sidewalk, she eyed her roses- yellow, stunning- which were her pride and joy, and on full display for the neighborhood. Soon she'd have to deadhead them to allow for a second bloom cycle. Roses were a lot of work, but they gave much in return.

Why don't boys like girls as they are?' 'They bore easy cause the so deadhead. Sometimes they want you mami, sometimes sis, sometimes lovergirl. You game with boys you got to know who you are and not let them tell you'.

To know Seattle one must know its waterfront. It is a good waterfront, not as busy as New York's, not as self-consciously colorful as San Francisco's, not as exotic as New Orleans, but a good, honest, working waterfront with big gray warehouses and trim fishing boats and docks that smell of creosote, and sea gulls and tugs and seafood restaurants and beer joints and fish stores--a waterfront where you can hear foreign languages and buy shrunken heads and genuine stuffed mermaids, where you can watch the seamen follow the streetwalkers and the shore patrol follow the sailors, where you can stand at an open-air bar and drink clam nectar, or sit on a deadhead and watch the water, or go to an aquarium and look at an octopus.

I have never yet managed to see the moment of the petals of a bud unfurling. I might dedicate the rest of my life to it and might still never see it. No, not might, I will: I will dedicate the rest of my life, in which I walk forward into this blossoming. When there's no blossom I will dead-head and wait. It'll be back. That's the nature of things. As it is, I am careful when kissing, or when taking anyone in my arms. I warn them about the thorns. I treat myself with care. I guard against pests and frost-damage. I am careful with my roots. I know they need depth and darkness, and any shit that comes my way I know exactly what to do with. I'm composed when it comes to compost.

For me, making a record is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live music is like being in a rowboat in the ocean.

Everything that had cursed them had made a home of this ground. It had grown tendrils and shoots. It had twisted and curled, and shot out thorns. They had to dig their hands in as deep as the earth would let them. They could not free themselves by deadheading flowers and crushing leaves. They would change nothing by picking flowers. They had to rip out their fate by the roots.

As explained by Garcia, “Essentially, the Grateful Dead audience is acting out their version of ‘How much freedom is there left in America to go for a wild ride?’ What’s left is you can follow the Grateful Dead on the road. You can’t be locked up for that yet. So it’s an adventure. And an adventure is essential. It’s part of what it means to find yourself in America. It’s kind of like the war-stories America, just like Neal Cassady on the road. It’s hard to join the circus, and you can’t hop the freights anymore, so you chase the Grateful Dead around. You have your adventures, when your car breaks down in Des Moines and you need to hitchhike some place and a guy picks you up and he’s a Deadhead. You can have your tires blown out in some weird town, and you get hell from strangers. These are your ‘war stories.’ You can have something that lasts through your life, the times you took chances. I think that’s essential in anybody’s life, and it’s harder and harder to do in America. If we’re providing some margin of that possibility, then that’s great. We’re one of the last adventures in America.

Anyhow, the day of that conversation about Mexico, and about Mr. Peter Stevens . . . that was the day I began to believe that Andy had some idea of doing a disappearing act. I hoped to God he would be careful if he did, and still, I wouldn’t have bet money on his chances of succeeding. Warden Norton, you see, was watching Andy with a special close eye. Andy wasn’t just another deadhead with a number to Norton; they had a working relationship, you might say. Also, Andy had brains and he had heart. Norton was determined to use the one and crush the other.

Wrecked and despondent at midlife, I need to undertake a strict personal evaluation that will lead to personal transformation. I must be willing to start afresh and attempt to make myself anew. In order to begin all over and not culminate in the same deadhead rut as before, I admit to harboring personal insecurities and boldly confront my greatest fears. In order to establish an altered foundation that will support a revised self, I commence by asking the pertinent questions. If I run fast enough and long enough, can I quash slavish personal demons and capture an elusive self? Can I exercise the self-discipline to eliminate the artificial screens that I hide behind in order to peer out at the formidable world? Do I possess the personal audacity to explore unfamiliar terrain and the internal grit to dual the primal flex of nature’s power while accepting on equal terms the thrall and tragic beauty of surviving in a violent habitat?

He handed me something done up in paper. 'Your mask,' he said. 'Don't put it on until we get past the city-limits.' It was a frightening-looking thing when I did so. It was not a mask but a hood for the entire head, canvas and cardboard, chalk-white to simulate a skull, with deep black hollows for the eyes and grinning teeth for the mouth. The private highway, as we neared the house, was lined on both sides with parked cars. I counted fifteen of them as we bashed by; and there must have been as many more ahead, in the other direction. We drew up and he and I got out. I glanced in cautiously over my shoulder at the driver as we went by, to see if I could see his face, but he too had donned one of the death-masks. 'Never do that,' the Messenger warned me in a low voice. 'Never try to penetrate any other member's disguise.' The house was as silent and lifeless as the last time - on the outside. Within it was a horrid, crawling charnel-house alive with skull-headed figures, their bodies encased in business-suits, tuxedos, and evening dresses. The lights were all dyed a ghastly green or ghostly blue, by means of colored tissue-paper sheathed around them. A group of masked musicians kept playing the Funeral March over and over, with brief pauses in between. A coffin stood in the center of the main living-room. I was drenched with sweat under my own mask and sick almost to death, even this early in the game. At last the Book-keeper, unmasked, appeared in their midst. Behind him came the Messenger. The dead-head guests all applauded enthusiastically and gathered around them in a ring. Those in other rooms came in. The musicians stopped the Death Match. The Book-keeper bowed, smiled graciously. 'Good evening, fellow corpses,' was his chill greeting. 'We are gathered together to witness the induction of our newest member.' There was an electric tension. 'Brother Bud!' His voice rang out like a clarion in the silence. 'Step forward.' ("Graves For Living")

It seems most of you believe that people are inherently good and to be trusted, that strangers are friends and friends brethren.

You’re a good lot, you Deadheads. I’m proud to be one of you.

She glanced over, watching her mother deadhead roses.

Don't imagine that a college education is necessary to success as a writer. Far from it. Some of our college men are dead-heads, drones, parasites on the body social, not alone useless to the world but to themselves.

I keep a begonia plant in my office, on my desk by the window. It’s thriving in that spot, right beside the bright light that filters in through the blue curtain in the afternoon. I have learned to care for begonias because I have killed a few in my time, and every time it is painful to admit that I could not keep them alive and well. When this begonia plant flourishes, I am full of hope. But still, sometimes I notice that they are thirsty. I pour water from my own drinking glass into the plastic container beneath the pot, so their roots can drink first. Within seconds, the water disappears, and I say to myself, “Oh, you were so thirsty.” They keep drinking and blooming and asking for more care in that most gentle way plants do, and I say that I am sorry when they are too thirsty or too drenched in sunlight. And I wonder how thirsty we are, or if we notice, if that mindfulness and way of keeping watch happens in our own souls. I wonder if we let others know when we need a drink or a break from the heat, or that we might need a little deadheading here or there. And when we get closer to the water, we drink it up within seconds, begging for more, while nearby someone says, “Oh, Love, you were so thirsty.” I wonder if we even notice that we’re thirsty.

Are you deadheading it back?” the trooper asked, checking the papers. “This time. I always try to bring back a load but the dispatcher was an idiot and didn’t hook me up. So yeah, I’m deadheading it back.

We walked to a row of three stones: our grandmother and grandfather and, between them, our mother. There were crocuses and daffodils and snowdrops blooming on my mother's grave. Gran had always carefully tended it. After Sunday dinners, when we were little, Gran would put on her wide-brimmed gardening hat and gloves and take along her basket of garden tools and bring us down here. She would plant lavender petunias and purple bearded irises. She would deadhead the spent daylilies and pull up weeds on my mother's grave and on my great-grandmother Beulah's grave back in the corner. She barely touched my grandfather's grave, scratched in some monkey grass and ivy and told us even that was too good for him.

That’s how music works. It can take your blues, dust them in a wicked mojo, sneak them to that crossroads where the Devil hangs out, and swap them for a veggie burrito made by a blissed-out Deadhead in a parking lot. This might not be exactly what you ordered, but it might inspire you all the same.

Stop this, she thought. Stop this pitiful absurd train of thought! Some people become deadheads. Some people become glue freaks. Jon Pear is a tear collector. It's a little weird, but Madrigal loved him, so he's lovable.

I miss the fresh air. I miss the satisfaction of pruning hedges and raking out flower beds. Hell, even deadheading rhodies.

I’d way rather mow your lawn or deadhead your rhodies or even mulch your flower beds than do your taxes or make your sandwich. At least with grass, you get the last word. Not like a sandwich, where somebody eats it.

In the garden the lovely flycatcher perches, watching as I deadhead the roses, plucking wilted petals in fistfuls and letting them float like messages to the dirt. The little bird casually studies my hand as it folds into a ball then fan-fingers out into some kind of idea perhaps. All the airish signic of her dipandump helpabit, and I have finally accepted her seat there on that spindly branch, her assiduous presence. She stretches out her wings, letting the sun bathe them, so that I can see her breast, see that her chest is clean of graffiti, clear of symbols, free of meaning.

I don’t see how a man can experience a true midlife crisis without some sort of mustache or beard expression. It’s how we recognize each other when passing on the street. You know, a fraternal thing, like Deadheads and their tie-dye shirts. I

dandled

We’re turning into a geriatric society. The old are fighting back. They have the great advantage of an irresistible recruitment programme. It’s called living.

Many young people became “Deadheads” following the Grateful Dead on tour. Veteran investigative journalist Jim Keith writes: “An FBI internal memo from 1968 mentions the employment of the Grateful Dead as an avenue ‘to channel youth dissent and rebellion into more benign and non-threatening directions.