Music can be used against us as much as it can be used for us. Muzak can put a whole nation to sleep, whereas a lullaby is intended to put a child to sleep in a sweet way.

A successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those messages are the same, like the pat and thud of two heartbeats, one within you, one surrounding. The message of the lullaby is that it’s okay to dim the eyes for a time, to lose sight of yourself as you sleep and as you grow: if you drift, it says, you’ll drift ashore: if you fall, you will fall into place.

The war on drugs is a war against the communities.

I like this life. I like it when it's hard, and I like it better when it's not, but I know you don't get the sweet part without the bitter.

I don't believe in nirvana. If nirvana was handed to us on a silver platter, this would be the first day of our struggle to keep it.

To be always in a state of wonder is a kind of sensitivity that can sometimes be an extraordinary blessing and sometimes a real pain.