I remember someone once saying, "Pete, you know you really should take voice lessons." And I said, "Well, if I could find any voice teacher that could teach me to sing like Lead Belly I'd spend every cent to study under him." But every time you'd go to a voice teacher, he'd teach you to warble, as if you'd want to be an opera singer, and that's not what I'm interested in.

Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life.

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

If there is a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things.

Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

I never intended to make a living from music. That's the funny thing. I wanted to be a journalist.