I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

If you're supposed to be doing something, the spirits will come and help you. They have helped me out with lines I shouldn't have known, chords I shouldn't have known. Every once in a while I get lines from somewhere, and I think, I better write this down.

You know what has made me the happiest I've ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.

Every once in a while, you live long enough to get the respect that people didn't want to give while you were trying to become a senior citizen.

I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.

Music has the power to make me feel good like nothing else does. It gives me some peace for a while. Takes me back to who I really am.

As for money - when I have it, it's great. When I don't, I go get some. I've been a dishwasher, a gardener, a cleaner.

The revolution that takes place in your head, nobody will ever see that.

Everything that's bad for you catches on too quickly in America, because that's the easiest thing to get people to invest in, the pursuits that are easy and destructive, the ones that bring out the least positive aspects of people.

If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.

I was a piano player before I was a poet.

Our accomplishments show what kind of people we are.

Well, I grew up on the blues, man!

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

Every show that sells out is like a hero's welcome for me.

I am honestly not sure how capable I am of love. And I'm not sure why.

I cannot afford to watch Fox News.

I don't mind being criticized. I enjoy being criticized personally, not by rumor.

I learnt early on that your audience take the songs in the way they want to rather than the way you might want them too.