“If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost, go back to the last place where you knew who you were, and what you were doing, and start from there.”

What would you be like if you had white hair and had not given up your principles? It might be wise as you deal with coalition efforts to think about the possibilities of going for fifty years.

If I had been at a University I don’t think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don’t think I have been as successful

There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

In fact when Sweet Honey was ten years old it was too big for me to run, and I knew it, but I ran it for another thirteen years because I couldn’t convince other people to really do it. And this year, I’m not running it.

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.

If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition.

I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975.

If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it’s probably not broad enough a coalition.

I just don’t think one person has that much to contribute to any subject

Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn’t have religion

If every moment is sacred and if you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.

And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.

I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience

Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You’re scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.

I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don’t understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American

Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women’s hair rhapsodically described, women’s faces acclaimed in odelike language.

I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I’ll be there until the last minute, fighting.

Things last so much longer than people.

Live everyday as though it’s your last ’cause one day you’ll be right.

What I feel bad about is not having published very much in the last few years.

The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

The Germans are a cruel race. Their operas last for six hours and they have no word for fluffy.