You know what has made me the happiest I've ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing.

I don't think people in power have the potential to do anything like that to me. I feel as though as long as our music is available, folks are going to hear it.

Music has the power to make me feel good like nothing else does. It gives me some peace for a while. Takes me back to who I really am.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expression on other people's faces.

Everything that's bad for you catches on too quickly in America, because that's the easiest thing to get people to invest in, the pursuits that are easy and destructive, the ones that bring out the least positive aspects of people.