In other words, it is what I do in the world that matters. When I traveled for three months in the Mideast, the places I wanted to go back to were Turkey and the Gaza Strip. It has to do with what Gandhi said: he found God in the eyes of the poor. Those are the places which were so moving that they were just unbearable.

Social change really cannot happen unless people are willing to take a risk, and they were. And I was so moved by that, and of course by the way that he spoke, that made a huge dent in my belief system and my spirit.

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.

There's very little I can sing now. When I asked my first voice teacher, who was the best one, "When will I know when to stop singing?" he said, "Your voice will tell you." And it is very, very difficult to sing now.

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.

During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.