Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.

To sing is to praise God and the daffodils, and to praise God is to thank Him, in every note within my small range, and every color in the tones of my voice, with every look into the eyes of my audience, to thank Him. Thank you, God, for letting me be born, for giving me eyes to see the daffodils lean in the wind, all my brothers, all my sisters, for giving me ears to hear crying, legs to come running, hands to smooth damp hair, a voice to laugh with and to sing with...to sing to you and the daffodils.

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

Some people don't even notice. "Oh, you sound exactly like you did!" And I say, "OK, if that's what you want to believe, that's fine."

I don't think of myself as a symbol of the sixties, but I do think of myself as a symbol of following through on your beliefs.

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

I think I would have had an easier time of it if I had had training much earlier. Because when I got to the training, it was in my late 30s and I already probably had every bad habit a singer could have. In fact, it still goes on. It's un-training those habits and retraining new ones - the breathing, the relaxation, the tongue, the lungs, the everything.