You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy. – Joan Baez
I see a young man playing ‘Plaisir d’Amour’ on guitar. I knew I didn’t want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing. – Joan Baez
I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don’t know what’s going to rise from the ruins. – Joan Baez
I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations – some large and some small. – Joan Baez
You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now. – Joan Baez
We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood. – Joan Baez
The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation. – Joan Baez
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one. – Joan Baez
Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men – bring them softness, teach them how to cry. – Joan Baez
The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence. – Joan Baez
If people have to put labels on me, I’d prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer. – Joan Baez
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. – Joan Baez
I didn’t go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing. – Joan Baez
During the ‘ballad’ years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs. – Joan Baez
