Quotes from Joan Baez

"Nasty Man" isn't a laughing matter, but you have to laugh anyway. The song, itself, becomes something of a laughing matter because we'd go crazy if we didn't keep laughing.

Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.

If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up.

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.

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.

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

Peace might sell, but who's buying?

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.

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.

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.

If you don't have music, you have silence. There is power in both.

God must have something to do with joy ... and with sadness.

I'm a badass. I really am. When you see me hanging with Snoop Doggy Dogg, I am perfectly at home and comfortable.

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

As long as one keeps searching, the answers will come.

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

My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging in slow motion.

If it's natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn how?

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

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

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.

No one knows what they'll do in a moment of crisis and hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.

As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.

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.