I'm the same on stage as I am off stage. A lot of people who I admire - Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne - are not that different either. You hope that if you met them that they'd be as nice and well-rounded as they appear.

How unthinkable that, in a country of such bursting plenty, so many people are facing ongoing hunger and poverty. If we are truly each other's keepers, let's support school lunches, food stamps, neighborhood garden projects, and so many other wonderful programs working to put an end to this cruel and needless blight once and for all.

I finally learned to accept that I can't make radio play blues any more than I could get Reagan out of the White House.

I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident - in the way that only 17-year-olds are - that I could change the world. My major was African Studies, and my plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism.

Part of the reason I had such a drive to be an activist, and support other activists, is because I was raised Quaker and my parents kept us very much informed and involved as kids in civil rights and the conservation movement.