Quotes from Joan Baez

Now you're telling me You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague 'Cause I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes, I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid

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.

Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.

If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.

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.

To love means you also trust.

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.

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

To sing is to love and affirm, to fly and soar, to coast into the hearts of the people who listen, to tell them that life is to live, that love is there, that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists, and must be hunted for and found.

Action is the antidote to despair.

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

In this society, we don't like to face the future and the dying process and all of it. Most of us really don't want to think about it, but it's facing me in the mirror every day.

Some people don't even notice. "Oh, you sound exactly like you did!" And I say, "OK, if that's what you want to believe, that's fine."

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.

As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with 10,000 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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