Joan Baez Quotes

When I started to pick up the bass, it was purely by random chance.

I have no idea how I do anything. I never have. You know I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call "Don McLean" when I was probably in high school. And I have been doing this for 40 years, adding songs and writing things, cobbling together albums, doing live things, you know, albums and tours. And then I have records on the charts. I have no idea how this happened.

I learned what I could do with my voice on stages and because of the people that I was around. It wasn't me sitting in a room by myself. I didn't know what I was doing. I was figuring it out on the fly.

If there's any business that instructs you in the strong hand of fate, it's show business. You can plan and plan, but it's what happens to you that really determines what your career will be like.

Well, a lot of successes come by mistake.

It fell into my lap. I grew up doing dance classes. And one day, a film production company contacted my dance school looking for background dancers. I wasn't looking for it. It just happened. And I found myself on set. And that was that.

I never wanted to be a part of the industry, as I had no knowledge about it. I am one of those rare and really lucky people for whom the calling identified me and not the other way around.

I knew I was going to be successful from day one. From day one. That's why it throws me whenever someone says it was such a fluke that I was successful.

Somebody up there likes me. It ain't like I've followed a well trodden trajectory.

I didn't start singing and writing songs properly until I was 19.

I never knew I was a songwriter. I didn't even know I was a singer. My parents just got me a guitar 'cause my uncle told them to get me one, and I started fooling with it.

I don't really know how to describe how I got into music - it kind of just happened.

Every step on my way to becoming an artist seemed preordained. The right people were always in the right places at the right times to boost me to the next level. I was fortunate to be selected for a summer drawing class offered to teens at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County.

I never thought I would actually become a professional actor. I just kept going with it. One thing led to another.

I think I never had this grandiose dream of being any country music star. I just slowly progressed into that's what I'm doing.

For me, music is a byproduct of this process - the human process - and the fact that I've managed to eke out a career with it is a happy accident more than any strategy.

I've had an interesting career, and I don't know if it was by chance or grace.

My film career was never planned.

For most human beings, if what they want happens, it is a success. If what they could not have imagined happens, it is luck. If what nobody could foresee happens, it is a miraculous existence.

I come from a cycling background. I happened to be good at it; the opportunities came my way. It wasn't something I necessarily searched to be involved in; it wasn't a dream. I just had an opportunity which you couldn't refuse.

I never would have thought that in a million years that this would have happened, being in WWE and being in a Muppet film. But for some stroke of luck I guess they both did and I'm loving both of them.

I work so hard, but... everything just goes my way! It's insane!

I don't want people to expect the hard tracks to continue my whole career. When I started making music, I wasn't making music like that.

Singing pop music was not something I planned, but I managed to do it.

You don't have a voice yet when you first come out. So even though I knew I had some deeper songs, my first album had to be about the tempo and the fun.