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I was writing Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.

Joan Baez

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Joan Baez
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 9
Activist
Composer
Dancer
Guitarist
Musician
Pacifist
Record Producer
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Staten Island
New York City
Joan Chandos Báez
Joan Báez
Joan Chandos Baez
Joan C. Baez
Thinking
Came
Interrupted
Call
Curves
Song
Diamond
Another
Phone
Remember
Literally
Nothing
Phones
Diamonds
Writing
Turned
Curve
Think
Took
Rust

More quotes by Joan Baez

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I didn't study anything really. I didn't learn out of the books because I couldn't read music very well, so it is what they say it is - you learn from other people. And my cohorts and I would sneak around the coffee shops and hear stuff we wanted to learn, and then you ask whoever was playing it to teach you.
Joan Baez
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I was addicted to rhythm 'n' blues pretty much directly into folk music. I had my little 45s of mostly black artists. That was as close as I got. I've never listened to heavy rock or stuff that jangles my nerves, because I'm already jangled.
Joan Baez
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As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.
Joan Baez
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There's a consensus out that it's OK to kill when your government decides who to kill. If you kill inside the country you get in trouble. If you kill outside the country, right time, right season, latest enemy, you get a medal.
Joan Baez
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When I was 16, the guest speaker was King. And I was completely overwhelmed because I had been studying nonviolence, talking about it, reading about it, but here it was happening, here it was people boycotting the buses and people on the streets and taking risks, which I think was the key.
Joan Baez
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I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?
Joan Baez
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I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world.
Joan Baez
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If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up.
Joan Baez
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If you don't have music, you have silence. There is power in both.
Joan Baez
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Social change really cannot happen unless people are willing to take a risk, and they were. And I was so moved by that, and of course by the way that he spoke, that made a huge dent in my belief system and my spirit.
Joan Baez
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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
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All of us are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival?
Joan Baez
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I was trying to disturb the war.
Joan Baez
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Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.
Joan Baez
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The point on nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink.
Joan Baez
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In other words, it is what I do in the world that matters. When I traveled for three months in the Mideast, the places I wanted to go back to were Turkey and the Gaza Strip. It has to do with what Gandhi said: he found God in the eyes of the poor. Those are the places which were so moving that they were just unbearable.
Joan Baez
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There's very little I can sing now. When I asked my first voice teacher, who was the best one, When will I know when to stop singing? he said, Your voice will tell you. And it is very, very difficult to sing now.
Joan Baez
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I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.
Joan Baez
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I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.
Joan Baez
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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