I've been obsessed with stopping people from blowing each other's brains out since I was ten.

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.

The white music was melodic and pretty, and you had beautiful women's voices like Gogi Grant and even the Andrews Sisters. Then I went directly to rhythm and blues, which had beautiful voices but not much melody in particular and pretty much the same chord pattern. I loved it, I was entrenched in it, but then folk music came in the middle of that for me, and made its own path. And it was part of the rebellion against bubblegum music, or music that is pretty but doesn't say anything.

I was addicted to rhythm 'n' blues pretty much directly into folk music. I had my little 45s of mostly black artists. That was as close as I got. I've never listened to heavy rock or stuff that jangles my nerves, because I'm already jangled.

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.

Action is the antidote to despair.

I am so disconnected from the world of rock 'n' roll. I was always peripheral, partly because of the drug culture. I was not involved in that.