In this world of doubt, one thing is certain for me; that I will go on writing songs up to and - I hope, through heavenly means or diabolical - beyond the day I die.
I hope that you will learn to take responsibility for your decisions. Don't take counsel of your fears.
If the only new thing we have to offer is an improved version of the past, then today can only be inferior to yesterday. Hypnotized by images of the past, we risk losing all capacity for creative change.
The aging and declining population will have far-reaching impacts. Declining fertility rates will possibly increase immigration. The structure of family and society will inevitably change.
My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.
When I was a child, I was living in the housing projects of Philadelphia. I didn't even have a Christmas tree.
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
You have to remind kids to stay connected to the meaning of Christmas. Sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, but it's so worth it.
I've taught fifth-year Christmas leavers last thing on a Friday afternoon. Basically, if you can face that you can face anything.
Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so.
'Make your plate look like a Christmas tree,' I tell people, 'mostly green with splashes of other bright colors.'
I won't forget the hood. I won't forget the days of catching a bullet on the way to the mailbox or bricks with death threats that somehow made their way through the window.
Every kid in America dreams of playing in the big leagues and they don't, just because. It's not because they blew out their knee. It's just because they didn't make it.
What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are.
I would say Gary Snyder, who is from my part of the world as a poet and environmental thinker, will be read just as Henry Thoreau as John Muir will continue to be read.
If we bestow but a very little attention to the economy of the animal creation, we shall find manifest examples of premeditation, perseverance, resolution, and consumate artifice, in order to effect their purpose.
Man's idea of God, and a God's collusion, is an essential part of the equation to wage war.
It would be great to have Bach in one corner, Bessie Smith in another, John Lennon in another. That's what I'd ideally like. A studio of the dead.
Being a purely instrumental album, it makes a musical statement, not a religious one, and I hope that people can feel the emotion of the great melodies, even without the words.
It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.
Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.
