Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.

Ugly ducklings don't turn into swans and glide off down the lake. Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.

The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.

There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind.

Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste.

Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet - nobody taxes the sun yet.

It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.

We can live in fear or act out of hope.

It's always enjoyable to listen to a friend's work, but if it doesn't resonate with you, then you can just appreciate it and it inspires you in its own way.

I can feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love.

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

To love is to be vulnerable: if God loves, then God is mortal.

If an adult uses violence on a child, the child will naturally assume that he too, has the right to use it on one smaller or weaker.

A long summer always meant a long winter to come.

It is the bane and the balm of individual perception that 'objective' reality is seen through the filter of each person's temperament.

Children and old people and the parents in between should be able to live together, in order to learn how to die with grace, together. And I fear that this is purely utopian fantasy.

Sometimes all it takes is a kind word of encouragement to get your heroes back on the right path.

I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.