I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.

The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes...but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies

The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.

People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.

The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind.

And the thing that I always tried to do with important singers when I met them was to sit down and record everything they knew, give them a first real run-through of their art.

Folk Music is the map of singing.

Nothing holds back human progress as frequently as the misbelief that the words ‘impossible’ and ‘improbable’ are synonyms.

Feelings are real. They often become one’s reality. But they are not always based on truth.

A brighter future is ours to write. Let’s begin this new chapter — together — and let’s start the work right now.

I love writing for myself. I read them [my stories], I cry over them sometimes.

The ideas of things intellectually known pass into the substance of the intellect much more than do foods into the substance of the body.

Does God understand you? Find the answer in Bethlehem.

Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder.

The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society.

We don't know the effects we have on each other, but we have them.

Do my movement and my thinking have an intimate connection? First of all, I don't think my body doesn't think.