“Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp.”

You don’t have to look a certain way to have a hit record.

We just magically thought this was all going to happen: we were going to have clean food, and organic this, and conscious that, and it just didn’t happen.

We can live in fear or act out of hope.

The connection between toxicity and cancer and safe air and water and food, all of that was important all along, as were women’s and human rights issues, but the nuke issue and the safe energy movement became really important to me in the mid-’70s.

I’ve been lucky enough that I can gather all sorts of experiences and find inspiration by traveling around and by spending time with people I admire.

How I measure success is getting to make another record and being able to the come back to the same town and play again cause you sold out the last time.

I can’t make you love me if you don’t, You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t.

In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident – in the way that only 17-year-olds are – that I could change the world.

If we are truly each other’s keepers, let’s support school lunches, food stamps, neighborhood garden projects, and so many other wonderful programs working to put an end to this cruel and needless blight once and for all.

I was already doing really well in terms of my goals, to keep my fans coming back.

There’s a balance between ballads and kick-ass songs.

I’m proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story – it’s casting, editing, cinematography.

The fifth member of my band is my non-profit work.

The generation I grew up in was the beginning of “stand up for yourself,” whether being a singer-songwriter or a feminist. In my college years, the feminist movement was really coming to fore, so we wouldn’t have put up with guys treating us less than equal.

I like to think I get better with age, but maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder.

The talent on YouTube is incredible, and it can spread like wildfire. The downside is that it’s very hard to convince the younger generation that they should pay for music.

Gonna wind it up on my guitar. Gonna make that silver sing.

No matter how long you play the guitar, there’s always something else to learn.

I’m actually better on the guitar than when I started, I think, because I’ve had so much time with it and I still practice and I love to do it and I love to sing.

I always liked the idea of the guitar – because cowboys played the guitar.

One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.

By the time I was 12 or 13, I felt that I was special, because I could play the guitar and write songs.

The electric guitar was vital in helping what I’ve achieved where would I be without it? Playing awfully quietly, for a start.

Guitar is easy, all it takes is 5 fingers, 6 strings and 1 a**hole.