Quote

Diamonds & Rust started off as another song. Then the words started to morph. When you write a song that deep, the words come from some place else. But when the songs stop coming, it would be so contrived to try and force it. Since then I've just been doing other people's music.

Joan Baez

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Come
Words
Rust
Writing
Force
Diamond
Trying
Song
Songs
Would
Write
Deep
People
Else
Coming
Another
Started
Morph
Place
Stop
Contrived
Music
Since
Diamonds

More quotes by Joan Baez

Image
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
Image
As long as we keep searching, the answers come.
Joan Baez
Image
The point on nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink.
Joan Baez
Image
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
Image
I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins.
Joan Baez
Image
We both know what memories can bring / They bring diamonds and rust.
Joan Baez
Image
My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging in slow motion.
Joan Baez
Image
If you don't have music, you have silence. There is power in both.
Joan Baez
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
Joan Baez
Image
I don't think of myself as a symbol of the sixties, but I do think of myself as a symbol of following through on your beliefs.
Joan Baez
Image
You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.
Joan Baez
Image
Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.
Joan Baez
Image
If you swing both ways, you really swing. I just figure you double your pleasure.
Joan Baez
Image
As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.
Joan Baez
Image
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
Image
Nasty Man isn't a laughing matter, but you have to laugh anyway. The song, itself, becomes something of a laughing matter because we'd go crazy if we didn't keep laughing.
Joan Baez
Image
I am so disconnected from the world of rock 'n' roll. I was always peripheral, partly because of the drug culture. I was not involved in that.
Joan Baez
Image
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