Joan Baez Quotes

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?

Above all, she is the girl who 'feels' things, who has hung on to the freshness and pain of adolescence, the girl ever wounded, ever young. Now, at an age when the wounds begin to heal whether one wants them to or not, Joan Baez rarely leaves the Carmel Valley.

Action is the antidote to despair.

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.

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?

Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow. You special, miraculous, unrepeatable, fragile, fearful, tender, lost, sparkling ruby emerald jewel, rainbow splendor person. It's up to you.

Peace might sell, but who's buying?

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. But you can decide how you're going to live now.

Maybe that afternoon was the closest I ever felt to Bob: his eyes were as old as God, and he was fragile as a winter leaf.

I was born gifted. I can speak of my gifts with little or no modesty, but with tremendous gratitude, precisely because they are gifts, and not things which I created, or actions about which I might be proud.

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.

God respects me when I work. He loves me when I sing. Tagore

I asked him what made us different, and he said it was simple, that I thought I could change things, and he knew that no one could.

The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?

Oh Mario, and Dylan, and Joan Baez, oh Free Speech and Anti-Vietnam—who in his right mind would have ever dreamed it could come to this in twelve months—abandoned to the supermarket and the breezeway scions—a bunch of fraternity men in Mustangs—and it is, unbelievably, all as the provocateur Kesey has prophesied it, droning

because of my deep-seated opinion that war itself is a crime; that the killing of one child, the burning of one village, the dropping of one bomb sinks us into such depths of depravity that there’s no use bickering over the particulars.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. But you can decide how you're going to live now

I first saw Bob Dylan in 1961 at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village. He was not overly impressive. He looked like an urban hillbilly, with hair short around the ears and curly on top.

In 1963, before the Beatles burst on the scene, a brief but powerful infatuation with folk music gripped America. The TV show that came along at the right time to capitalize on the craze was Hootenanny, featuring such Caucasian interpreters of the black experience as the Chad Mitchell Trio and the New Christy Minstrels. (Perceived commie Caucasians like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez were not invited to perform.)

She was the right girl at the right time. She had only a small repertory of Child ballads, never trained her pure soprano and annoyed some purists because she was indifferent to the origins of her material and sang everything ‘sad’.

and you know the first thing Dylan did when they started talking about how much money he could make? He went over in a corner by himself, and started scribbling down a list of who his friends were, because if he was gonna be rich, he’d have to know.

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses. —Joan Baez

These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus. Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town. Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men? I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer. I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The universe may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis. To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.

Less finds himself searching for an appropriate prayer. He was, however, raised Unitarian; he has only Joan Baez to turn to, and “Diamonds and Rust” gives no solace. On and on the plane convulses in the moonlight, like a man turning into a werewolf.

[Bob] Dylan said, "I don't have to B.S. anybody like those guys up on Broadway that're always writin' about 'I'm hot for you and you're hot for me--ooka dooka dicka dee.' There's other things in the world besides love and sex that're important too. People shouldn't turn their backs on 'em just because they ain't pretty to look at. How is the world ever gonna get any better if we're afraid to look at these things.

His humor was dry, private, and splendid. Sometimes he would start to chuckle. A little at a time, his lips would move from a genuine smile to a pucker. Then, instantly, he would tighten them back in, until a tiny convulsion of laughter would bring them back to the smile, and sometimes, a full grin followed by laughter.

Large-scale enthusiasm for folk music began in 1958 when the Kingston Trio recorded a song, “Tom Dooley,” that sold two million records. This opened the way for less slickly commercial performers. Some, like Pete Seeger, who had been singing since the depression, were veteran performers. Others, like Joan Baez, were newcomers. It was conventional for folk songs to tell a story. Hence the idiom had always lent itself to propaganda. Seeger possessed an enormous repertoire of message songs that had gotten him blacklisted by the mass media years before. Joan Baez cared more for the message than the music, and after a few years devoted herself mainly to peace work.

Twelve years later, when I finally met and became friends with Sara, we talked for hours about those days when the Original Vagabond was two-timing us. I told Sara that I’d never found Bob to be much at giving gifts, but that he had once bought me a green corduroy coat, and had told me to keep a lovely blue nightgown from the Woodstock house. “Oh!” said Sara, “that’s where it went!

He was rarely tender, and seldom reached out to anticipate another’s needs, though occasionally he would exhibit a sudden concern for another outlaw, hitchhiker, or bum, and go out of his way to see them looked after. He was touching and infinitely fragile. His indescribably white hands moved constantly: putting a cigarette almost to his mouth, then tugging relentlessly at a tuft of hair at his neck, inadvertently dumping the cigarette ashes in dusty cavalcades down his jacket.

This fusion of flower power and processor power, enlightenment and technology, was embodied by Steve Jobs as he meditated in the mornings, audited physics classes at Stanford, worked nights at Atari, and dreamed of starting his own business. “There was just something going on here,” he said, looking back at the time and place. “The best music came from here—the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin—and so did the integrated circuit, and things like the Whole Earth Catalog.

Now you're telling me You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague 'Cause I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes, I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid

Joan Baez was a personality before she was entirely a person, and, like anyone to whom that happen, she is in a sense the hapless victim of what others have seen in her, written about her, wanted her to be and not to be. The roles assigned to her are various, but variations on a single theme. She is the Madonna of the disaffected. She is the pawn of the protest movement. She is the unhappy analysand. She is the singer who would not train her voice, the rebel who drives the Jaguar too fast, the Rima who hides with the bird and the deer. Above all, she is the girl who “feels” things, who has hung on to the freshness and pain of adolescence, the girl ever wounded, ever young. Now, at an age when the wounds begin to heal whether one wants them to or not, Joan Baez never leaves the Carmel Valley.

Well I'll be damned Here comes your ghost again But that's not unusual It's just that the moon is full And you happened to call And here I sit Hand on the telephone Hearing a voice I'd known A couple of light years ago Heading straight for a fall As I remember your eyes Were bluer than robin's eggs My poetry was lousy you said Where are you calling from? A booth in the midwest Ten years ago I bought you some cufflinks You brought me something We both know what memories can bring They bring diamonds and rust Well you burst on the scene Already a legend The unwashed phenomenon The original vagabond You strayed into my arms And there you stayed Temporarily lost at sea The Madonna was yours for free Yes the girl on the half-shell Could keep you unharmed Now I see you standing With brown leaves falling all around And snow in your hair Now you're smiling out the window Of that crummy hotel Over Washington Square Our breath comes out white clouds Mingles and hangs in the air Speaking strictly for me We both could have died then and there Now you're telling me You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague 'Cause I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid

From Joan Baez at Town Hall in New York City, on her 50th Anniversary Tour as a performer. "People always ask me about my voice. I tell them, 'The gift is from God. My job is just maintenance and delivery.

In the words of 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.

In a way it is impossible to talk about Joan Baez without talking about Ira Sandperl. “One of the men on the Planning Commission said I was being led down the primrose path by the lunatic fringe,” Miss Baez giggles. “Ira said maybe he’s the lunatic and his beard’s the fringe.” Ira Sandperl is a forty-two-year-old native of St. Louis who has, besides the beard, a shaved head, a large nuclear-disarmament emblem on his corduroy jacket, glittering and slightly messianic eyes, a high cracked laugh and the general look of a man who has, all his life, followed some imperceptibly but fatally askew rainbow.

Eyes heavy with sleep, Nestor awoke to Harrison humming the tune of Here’s to You by Joan Baez and Ennio Morricone.

I'm scared. I think what it means is that you'll be the rock 'n' roll king, and I'll be the peace queen.

You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. But you can decide how you’re going to live now.” ― Joan Baez ― Daybreak

Joan Baez was a personality before she was entirely a person, and, like anyone to whom that happens, she is in a sense the hapless victim of what others have seen in her, written about her, wanted her to be and not to be.

but spend the afternoon in total silence, which involves not only not talking but also not reading, not writing, and not smoking. Even on discussion days, this silence is invoked for regular twenty-minute or hour intervals, a regimen described by one student as “invaluable for clearing your mind of personal hangups” and by Miss Baez as “just about the most important thing about the school.

Four days a week, Miss Baez and her fifteen students meet at the school for lunch: potato salad, Kool-Aid, and hot dogs broiled on a portable barbecue. After lunch they do ballet exercises to Beatles records, and after that they sit around on the bare floor beneath a photomural of Cypress Point and discuss their reading: Gandhi on Nonviolence, Louis Fischer’s Life of Mahatma Gandhi, Jerome Frank’s Breaking the Thought Barrier, Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience, Krishnamurti’s The First and Last Freedom and Think on These Things, C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite, Huxley’s Ends and Means, and Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media.

By now the sky outside is the color of his marble, but they are all reluctant about gathering up their books and magazines and records, about finding their car keys and ending the day, and by the time they are ready to leave Joan Baez is eating potato salad with her fingers from a bowl in the refrigerator, and everyone stays to share it, just a little while longer where it is warm.

The story of Bangladesh Is an ancient one again made fresh By blind men who carry out commands Which flow out of the laws upon which nation stands Which say to sacrifice a people for a land ("Song of Bangladesh")

If anyone bothered to ask her, back then, what she did want, she would have said: to listen to music, Zeppelin and the Dead most importantly, but also Procol Harum, and Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell; to see George McGovern elected someday (now that Bobby Kennedy was dead and gone); to go into a line of work that would make a difference in the world; to meet a good man who took her seriously; to travel the country and the world. But nobody asked her, and so she kept these wishes quiet, writing them only in journals, summoning them to the forefront of her mind whenever a birthday or a well or a star presented her with a formal opportunity to make them known to the universe.