I think all of us thought that by the '70s, at the latest the '80s, all the world's problems would be solved and everyone would be getting along fine. And instead we saw that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year, Robert F. Kennedy died. We saw that it was going to be a lot more difficult than I think we had thought.

I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music.

Dreams were all they gave for free to ugly duckling girls like me.

When you’re young, the goal is to have a hit. You get a little older and the goal becomes to get to make another record.

Society's Child' was a real hard record to start with. That's all you want is for you to put your first record out and have people screaming at you in the streets. But it taught me right away that what I was doing was valuable and important.

There will always be those people who are just backward and ignorant. There will always be those people. They need somebody to feel superior to.

Artists are taught to be humble about their impact, especially in folk music. It's so ingrained that I have a hard time even thinking I had any impact other than what a normal hit song would have.