Action is the antidote to despair.

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.

As long as we keep searching, the answers come.

I never pretended to be rock star. I would make a lousy rock star. I don't have the right voice for it. I don't have the "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" spirit. But the greatest flattery in the last couple of years is being called a "badass" by young singers.

Now I know I understand that it was Sgt. Pepper's Band, that put the sixties into song, where have all the heroes gone?

I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.

Somebody else does the rigor and then I listen. I have an assistant, and my manager, and other people who hunt and find and send it to me, and then I just figure out which ones I can do justice to.