It's not a person's depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent.

Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.

Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.

...when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain.

Any given moment—no matter how casual, how ordinary—is poised, full of gaping life.

All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.

To survive was to escape fate. But if you escape your fate, whose life do you then step into?

Truth grows gradually in us, like a musician who plays a piece again and again until suddenly he hears it for the first time

The reason most people have kids is because they get pregnant.

Democracy doesn't begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls 'The Patriot's Dream.

Evil comes up softly like a flower.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

The best way to have the last word is to apologize.

Finding fresh song topics can sometimes be quite difficult.

There is absolutely nothing special about walking on a rope stretched along the ground. Where there is no risk, there can be no pride in a deed accomplished, and therefore no happiness.

That's correct, I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn't write.

Reforesting the earth is possible, given a human touch.

As artists, it's really important to take time to see what other art is happening and to know what's happening in the world.