JOAN BAEZ

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.

I'm lucky to have met so many people who have been involved in peace and who have been peace prize winners.

I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins.

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.

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

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.

I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small.

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

I've never been an optimist.

My dread is for my show to be a nostalgia act. So the key to it is how do we keep it fresh?

I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.

The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence.

Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.

Action is the antidote to despair.

People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist.

I see a young man playing 'Plaisir d'Amour' on guitar. I knew I didn't want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing.

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.

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.

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.