“A lot of us don’t get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things.”

Becoming a father made me a lot more sentimental than I ever was before. I never cried at movies before I became a parent. I feel music more intensely.

Sometimes it takes time to get into what ideas actually mean to you. Even when you’re not writing a song, it’s like that.

What first got me involved in politics was being 14, and a youth organizer comes to my house with a van full of 14 year old girls. “Hey, you want to go to the beach with us? But first we’re going to go support the cannery workers’ strike in Watsonville.”

I wanted to write a song about sexism, but I didn’t want to do it in a mechanical way and be like, “Don’t be sexist!” because that’s not how I talk in regular life.

What I’m trying to do is make music that people relate to, that talks about ideas that are personal but also make that connection to trying to make revolutionary change, and I don’t need to change my music to get to a certain audience.

I wanted to be part of changing the world. I don’t want to just stand by and watch it be however it is.

In high school, everybody rapped. You just pounded on the table.

You look like gold. I’ve been fooled before, but now I know I’ve made the mistake in the past. But now I, now I know the difference from gold and brass.

I’ve never had a really creative idea sitting at my desk. All the big ideas that made a difference happened when I was playing outside.

We know in history that great individuals have totally changed everything, whether it be Jesus Christ or Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill or Albert Einstein. I actually think every person can make a difference.

The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is so often just simply that little word – extra. And for me, I had always grown up with the belief that if someone succeeds it is because they are brilliant or talented or just better than me…

Everyone gets the same twenty-four hours in a day, the difference is how you use it.

In New York I was always offered the hot, sexy roles. But in L.A. I was offered the plain, dowdy roles. It says a lot about the difference between the coasts

The only difference between ‘try’ and ‘triumph’ is varying degrees of ‘umph’

A bomb is a bomb, what’s the difference between different kinds of bombs? All bombs are to kill, but it’s about how to use it.