I want to go to Africa and find a really great hotel with good food right above a water hole where I can sit, have breakfast, and just watch the elephants play in the water.

When I was 11 years old, my parents wanted me to do something besides get in trouble. So they enrolled me in sailing classes at the Sea Shell Association in Santa Barbara, Calif. From the moment I climbed into that 8-foot dinghy in 1952, I knew instinctively what to do and sensed I had done it before.

My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.

The greatest thing is the internet and that means that anybody, you have just as much access as I do. And you can make your little tape and work on it and work on it until you got it the way you want it. And then you can put it on the net. And if it's any damn good somebody's gonna notice. That's happened over and over again now. To me that's good. That's good access that isn't controlled by the companies. I think that's a great thing.

Chestnut brown canary, ruby throated sparrow, sing a song, don't be long, thrill me to the marrow.

I believe in this country [the USA], I love this country, I believe in the idea of this country, and this country is an idea.

You tend to write as you get older about family love more than you write about romantic love or ooh baby. ... The stuff that you want to celebrate about humanity has always been there and probably always will be.