“I’m pretty sure I wrote this song in Jamaica, where we had very good ganga that year and somebody gave me 110-proof rum. I feel asleep on the beach and went into a dream in which I saw a cross-legged figure coming over the ocean. Now you have to mix that up with the Indian trip [with The Beatles – Ed] because a cross-legged man is a yogi; and maybe Maharishi comes into a little bit. I am the Hurdy Gurdy Man. But also the Hurdy Gurdy Man is all singers who sing songs of love. The hurdy gurdy is an instrument from the sixteenth century. The Hurdy Gurdy Man is anyone who speaks this timeless truth. There may be a dark age, but out of that dark age will come light and the answer to all men’s problems.”Donovan (131)

“Atlantis is actually a state of mind, maybe a perfect society. Inside, humanity is the same. There are different colors, different locations. But inside there is a constant knowledge that everybody has in every age. And thus the myths are similar in all ages.”Donovan (132)

“Jennifer was Pattie Boyd’s sister. A love song for a woman is for all women. It’s for womanhood. Like “Lalena” is not about a particular woman but about all women, one aspect of them.”Donovan (132)

“This was about Linda Lawrence and I. A very positive love song. And although I was going through pain because I wasn’t with her, it actually stated that I would be with her. And prophetically enough, I was with her. Linda was with Brian Jones very early and had a boy. I fell in love with her when she was still hurt by Brian. So I wrote this song as a letter to her through the airwaves.”Donovan (133)

“This was a letter to an old school friend. He was actually one of three school friends, and we all had nicknames and he liked a Zen monk named Diplodocus or something like that, and we called him Dippy for short. He joined the Army and I wrote this epistle to him; it was a memory of school days.”Donovan (133)

“It’s about a relationship that one can’t have. Lost love, love unrequited. And it is actually about Linda Lawrence, who I didn’t meet until a year later. It was prophetic. It was about all womanhood or the relationship that one wanted but couldn’t have: “Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind”.”Donovan (133)

“I was just pointing out the universal law of things returning to themselves. First there is trouble, then there is no trouble, then there is! There is a very good book by an Arab called Kahlil Gibran, who writes things in parables, much the same way as Christ spoke in the Bible, called The Science Of Being. He thinks that a child’s mind should be allowed to develop free as the wind. I feel very much the same about such things.”Donovan (655)