Top 40 Don McLean Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Do you believe in rock ’n roll? Can music save your mortal soul?”

— Don McLean

2. “There we were all in one place, a generation lost in space.”

— Don McLean

3. “This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”

— Don McLean

4. “Something touched me deep inside The day the music died.”

— Don McLean

5. “A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music use to make me smile.”

— Don McLean

6. “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. Good old boys drinking whiskey and rye, singing, this’ll be the day that I die.”

— Don McLean

7. “And when no hope was left inside on that starry, starry night, you took your life as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”

— Don McLean

8. “Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?”

— Don McLean

9. “Jerusalem is old, Jerusalem is new, Jerusalem can hold Moslem, Christian, Jew.”

— Don McLean

10. “Hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky, a dream come true, I’ll live there til I die.”

— Don McLean

11. “Starry, starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze reflect Vincent’s eyes of china blue.”

— Don McLean

12. “Not a word was spoken. The church bells all were broken.”

— Don McLean

13. “Helter skelter in a summer swelter.”

— Don McLean

14. “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack sat on a candle stick, cause fire is the devil’s only friend.”

— Don McLean

15. “Drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.”

— Don McLean

16. “We all got up to dance. Oh, but we never got the chance!”

— Don McLean

17. “In a sense, ‘American Pie’ was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful.”

— Don McLean

18. “In the streets the children screamed. The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.”

— Don McLean

19. “As you sell your soul and sow your seeds, and you wound yourself and your loved ones bleed. And your habits grow and your conscience feeds, on all that you thought you should be.”

— Don McLean

20. “As I watched him on the stage, my hands were clinched in fists of rage. No angel born in hell, could break that Satan’s spell.”

— Don McLean

21. “Devoid of all romance, the music plays and everyone must dance. I’m bowing out.”

— Don McLean

22. “Work my hands in the soil, what’s the pay for all the toil? Dust for blood, dust for blood, dust for blood.”

— Don McLean

23. “When people ask me what ‘American Pie’ means, I tell them it means I don’t ever have to work again if I don’t want to.”

— Don McLean

24. “Every pulse of your heartbeat is one liquid moment that flows through the veins of your being. Like a river of life flowing on since creation, approaching the sea with each new generation.”

— Don McLean

25. “American Pie speaks to the loss that we feel. That’s why that song has found the niche that it has.”

— Don McLean

26. “I developed this fantasy world. I found that that was much more fun and more interesting and exciting than real life was to me. Then, once I got the guitar going when I was a teenager, I set sail for the direction I’ve been in my whole life.”

— Don McLean

27. “The Byrds flew off the fallout shelter, eight miles high and falling fast.”

— Don McLean

28. “Each thread of life that you leave, will spin around your deeds and dictate your needs.”

— Don McLean

29. “Every thread of creation is held in position by still other strands of things living. In an earthly tapestry hung from the skyline of smoldering cities so gray and so vulgar, as not to be satisfied with their own negativity, but needing to touch all the living as well.”

— Don McLean

30. “I’m glad that my music has helped other people as it’s helped me. It makes me glad that I did what I did with my life.”

— Don McLean

31. “I feel like a spinning top or a DreidelThe spinning don’t stop when you leave the cradleYou just slow downRound and around this world you goSpinning through the lives of the people you knowWe all slow down.”

— Don McLean

32. “I had asthma when I was a kid, asthma so bad that it would turn into pneumonia and I almost died several times. Nobody knew why back then, but now it’s obvious.”

— Don McLean

33. “They don’t keep their promises in the promised land, its getting mighty hard to find an honest man.”

— Don McLean

34. “Some believe in Jesus, they don’t act like they do. Some believe in Mohammed, I don’t believe that’s true. Cause they do believe in money, and gold is what it’s for, all the gold can’t buy no peace of mind in a world that don’t believe in nothing anymore.”

— Don McLean

35. “I got my first guitar when I was 16. I’d play for my family and friends, but taking that guitar out there into the wide, wide world wasn’t something I ever thought about.”

— Don McLean

36. “My face on every coin engraved, the anarchists are all enslaved. My flag is forever waved, by the grateful people I have saved.”

— Don McLean

37. “In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms.”

— Don McLean

38. “I think longevity is more important than trying to make people realize you’re around every second.”

— Don McLean

39. “People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.”

— Don McLean

40. “I don’t relate to what’s left of the music business. There doesn’t seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way – there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.”

— Don McLean

41. “I was always just into my music and maybe into trying to save the world a little bit. I never really thought I’d have a hit record or anything like that. I was prepared to travel around all over the country, kind of like a Johnny Appleseed, and sing.”

— Don McLean

42. “The kids today all seem to think they should be stars, but I wasn’t brought up that way.”

— Don McLean

43. “I mean, I’ve been given a terrific life by the audiences who stuck with me all over the world.”

— Don McLean

44. “I am what I do, and that’s partly why I don’t want to give up singing. But when I can’t sing well, I will.”

— Don McLean

45. “When I go on the road now, which is less than before, but still more than I’d like to, I think of myself primarily as a singer. Not a songwriter, not a celebrity, just a man who likes to sing.”

— Don McLean

46. “Over the years I’ve had more and more of an association with Nashville.”

— Don McLean

47. “I’d listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I’ve ever written.”

— Don McLean

48. “How did the land of Jefferson, how did the land of King, become the land of hamburgers and raisins that can sing? Roosevelt was cripple, Lincoln was a geek, they’d never get elected, their clothes were never chic.”

— Don McLean