White Rabbit

• One pill makes you larger
  And one pill makes you small,
  And the ones that mother gives you
  Don't do anything at all.
  Go ask Alice
  When she's ten feet tall.

• And if you go chasing rabbits
  And you know you're going to fall,
  Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
  Has given you the call.
  Call Alice
  When she was just small

• When the men on the chessboard
  Get up and tell you where to go
  And you've just had some kind of mushroom
  And your mind is moving low.
  Go ask Alice
  I think she'll know.

• When logic and proportion
  Have fallen softly dead
  And the White Knight is talking backwards
  And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
  Remember what the dormouse said:
  "Feed your head! Feed your head!"

Somebody to Love?

Somebody to Love?: A Rock-and-Roll Memoir (1998) by Grace Slick and Andrea Cagan

• In Germany I ingested the entire contents of the hotel mini-bar before a show and stuck my fingers in this guy's nostrils because I thought they would fit.
  • On this incident Paul Kantner remarked: "I remember one night in Germany she spotted a guy picking his nose and she jumped on the guys lap and picked his nose. Half of the audience was grossed out, the other half thought it was great. Hey, half isn't bad!"

• I've enjoyed the accommodations offered by police departments from Florida to Hawaii. Any time I saw a badge, something in me would snap.

• Jim Morrison was a well-built boy, larger than average, and young enough to maintain the engorged silent connection right through the residue of chemicals.

• The first words I ever heard the alcohol rehab counselor say were 'Good morning, assholes!' With that, I liked him right away.

• The wiser you get on the inside, the uglier you get on the outside. The world's great gurus have beautiful things to say but they generally look like shit.

• Man is the only animal that knows he's going to die, so we invent a heaven to keep from going crazy. Most people are hypnotized by organized religion from childhood.

• ... loss either teaches you to persist in the face of suffering, or hardens you into a bitter cynic. Sometimes, it does a little of both.

Unsourced

• Janis knew more than I did about "how it was", but she lacked enough armor for the inevitable hassles. She was open and spontaneous enough to get her heart trampled with a regularity that took me thirty years to experience or understand. On the various occasions when we were together, she seemed to be holding in something she thought I might not want to hear, like older people do when they hear kids they love saying with absolute youthful confidence, "Oh, that'll never happen to me." Sometimes you know you can't tell them how it is, they have to find out for themselves. Janis felt like an old soul, a wisecracking grandmother whom everybody loved to visit. When I was with her, I often felt like a part of her distant family, a young upstart relative who was still too full of her own sophistry to hear wisdom. Did we compliment each other? Yes, but not often enough. ~ On Janis Joplin

• I smoke every minute that I'm awake and have since I was 15, It's so stupid; it doesn't even get me high. Which is just as well, I suppose. My mind's been altered enough.

• I felt a closeness and just amazement at Monterey because people were comfortable, there was enough area for people to sit, to go to the bathroom, to buy food. It was the first time many of the bands had met each other, so we were all really marveling at each other. It was just one good group of people after another. And different kinds of music — from Ravi Shankar to The Mamas & The Papas, The Who, Jimi Hendrix — I mean, it was just nuts! ~ On the Monterey Pop Festival

• I want my contribution to help end the suffering of rabbits and other animals now being poisoned and killed by the makers of Tide, Crest and Crisco. ~ On donating some of her royalties from "White Rabbit" to PETA

• I was appalled that the San Francisco ethic didn't mushroom and envelope the whole world into this loving community of acid freaks. I was very naive.

• If you remember the Sixties, you weren't there.

• It's none of the governments business who comes to, in, on or from my body.

• No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it.

• Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music you can reach anybody. Between the two there is you, unstoppable.

• We are your parents' worst nightmare.

• I don't like old people on a rock and roll stage. . . me included.

• There is much to be said for personal violence. Even Joan Baez flattens velvet, when she sits down.

Quotes of others about Grace Slick

• A startling presence, both vocally and visually... Off the cuff, like the whole '60's were off the cuff. An Oscar Wilde in drag who combined insight and sarcasm that was sometimes light, sometimes dark. A provocateur. ~ Paul Kantner as quoted in The Buffalo News (6 September 1991)