When people ask me what I do, strangers on a plane, perhaps, I tell them that I think. Thinking is excellent exercise, as much as swimming or jogging.

When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.

I started my career at the top and have been working my way downwards ever since.

I have a great interest in a number of things, perhaps too many. I admire people who seem to concentrate on only one fixed discipline to the exclusion of almost everything else.

I taught myself to drive. I hope that the child in me never dies.

Most performers don't admit this, because it sounds negative and performers are not supposed to be negative, but when I was on the road, I was lonely.

A characteristic of older folksongs, in most cases, is that we don't know their composers or authors. Older folksongs were written often with no commercial purpose in mind. They were passed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation.