"Nasty Man" isn't a laughing matter, but you have to laugh anyway. The song, itself, becomes something of a laughing matter because we'd go crazy if we didn't keep laughing.

Action is the antidote to despair.

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.

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

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.

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.

We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.