Joan Baez Quotes

"Never close the door, you may need this person someday," is one of her favorite expressions. In 1983, at Newsweek's fiftieth anniversary celebration, I was seated across from Mary McCarthy at the head table. The big feature of the evening was a videotaped speech by Henry Kissinger. When he appeared on the big screen I stuffed my stockinged feet into their high heels and left the table, and stood in the lobby until it was finished. My moderation and diplomacy end where Henry's nose begins.

I learned to love the Japanese bow, and I use it to this day in concert to thank people for having come to hear me.

There was a great deal of profound joy in my life, but there was practically no fun. I didn't know much about having fun. I felt too guilty, as though I wasn't supposed to start having fun until everyone in the world was fed and clothed.

The first time I was in the South was in 1961. I was on a regular concert tour, and was barely aware of the civil rights movement, probably because I hadn't yet made the transition from Michael to the real world. I did discover, however, that no blacks were at any of my concerts, and would not have been allowed in if they had come. The following summer I wrote into the contract that I wouldn't sing unless blacks were admitted into the hall.

Rebellion, revolution don't need dollars They need this instead Imagination, suffering, light and love And care for every human being You never steal, you never kill You are a part of hope and life The revolution goes from man to man And heart to heart And I sense when I look at the stars That we are children of life Death is small

My personal life has also been complicated-and public-though I am beginning to find more of a sense of peace and self-acceptance than I ever thought possible. Once I wanted to be married and have heaps of kids scrambling around me, licking cake mix off eggbeaters and riding Saint Bernards through the kitchen while I cooked stew over an open fire. Alas, those images bore no relation to my areas of competence, and since my marriage to David Harris dissolved in January of 1974 I have lived mainly alone, with occasional romantic interludes, the best of which are magical and splendidly impractical.

Miracles bowl me over And often will they do so Now I think I was asleep till I heard The voice of the great Caruso Bring infinity home Let me embrace it one more time Make it the lilies of the field Or Caruso in his prime

I tend more towards Buddhist and Native American thought. For me, the spirits are quite real.

I’ve never taken much time to do nothing, which I think is pretty important, especially at my age, and sort of contemplating what is coming. In this culture, we spend most of our time trying to avoid it. I would like to have more of a Buddhist approach.

True he was a vocal miracle But that's only secondary It's the soul of the monarch butterfly That I find a little bit scary

one day I told Ira that I did not want to remain an ignoramus forever and asked if he would consider tutoring me more formally. Ira claims that I suggested the next idea, and I think that he did, but the discussion evolved into a proposition that we form a school called the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence.

All of us alive are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival? (p. 322)

Bangladesh, Bangladesh When the sun sinks in the west Die a million people of the Bangladesh

It seemed a miracle that I would meet, and have the blessing to know and work with, one of the two saints of the phenomenon which had won my heart when I was barely sixteen years old: the concept of radical nonviolence, introduced to the world as a revolutionary political tool by Mahatma Gandhi in India, and reintroduced now by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States of America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., more than any other public figure helped to solidify my ideas and inspired me to act upon them.