“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.

I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or to want to stay out of the fray, but today is not one of those moments.

There’s a big difference between trolling and just attacking guys to attack guys, to get under people’s skin, and to genuinely express how you felt about something.

I got drunk in Canada. I was there for 2 days but I was drunk there for 4 days. I don’t know how it worked. I guess it was with the time difference or something.

You must know that there are different tastes. There are also different powers of digestion… different temperaments… differences in the capacity to comprehend.

All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what’s inside of all of us.

I have discovered that there is a crucial difference between society’s image of old people and ‘us’ as we know and feel ourselves to be.

In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful, white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can’t seem to get there now. I can’t seem to get over that line.

The difference between mercy and grace? Mercy gave the prodigal son a second chance. Grace gave him a feast.