Action is the antidote to despair.

I didn't study anything really. I didn't learn out of the books because I couldn't read music very well, so it is what they say it is - you learn from other people. And my cohorts and I would sneak around the coffee shops and hear stuff we wanted to learn, and then you ask whoever was playing it to teach you.

That was sheer luck that it [being immersed into folk scene] happened when my voice began to develop. I don't know exactly what would have happened if I hadn't been alive and well and really lively in the Cambridge scene. But (the folk scene) was, and I fell into it absolutely naturally in the little coffee shops, and pretty soon it was Newport and then it was an overwhelming response internationally, actually.

My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging in slow motion.

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.

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.

If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up.