My father was a physicist and also an activist. My first public protest was with my dad at Stanford. I came by all that honestly.

I have heard more than once, 'Shut up and sing!' and I get it now.

"Diamonds & Rust" started off as another song. Then the words started to morph. When you write a song that deep, the words come from some place else. But when the songs stop coming, it would be so contrived to try and force it. Since then I've just been doing other people's music.

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.

I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

It [my vocal] didn't sound like what I wanted to hear; the vibrato isn't what I liked anymore. So I got myself to an ear, nose and throat guy who does a lot of work with singers, and I was hoping there was a big wart on my vocal cords or something and they could scrape it off and I could have the voice I wanted. But he said, "No, for 71, that's your voice."