Quotes

Be strong, speak true and spread the peace.

[2000, on right-wing radio host Laura Schlessinger's views on homosexuality] She has her own opinion. If people want to listen to it, that's fine... I don't believe in shutting anybody up.

[on 2/25/07, speaking to the media at The 79th Annual Academy Awards (2007) on her win for Best Song, "I Need to Wake Up" for the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006)] This is the only naked man that will ever be in my bedroom.

[on life after chemotherapy] It's a daily chore, but I've learned how to do it. It gets easier every day. You need to believe that fear is a perception, is a choice, that anything you fear will draw you to it and you will have to go through that eye of a needle some day. Might as well do it now because it will only get bigger and harder if you don't. Once you do, you get on the other side and you're like "Well, that wasn't so hard. That didn't hurt that bad.".

I love playing with a symphony and along the line of doing new challenging things. It's fun to have three or four people make music together, but when you get seventy-five people concentrating on one piece of music, that's a whole lot of energy streaming into the musical blanket we are weaving. It's gorgeous, it's amazing. With my band, if I make a mistake, I can just correct it in the next measure, but when you are playing with a symphony and you make a mistake, seventy-five of you are going down.

I'm proud that I can stand up and say that every choice I have made I have made with the best intentions and that I've done my best. And that's just about the most you can say as you go along in life. By God, just do your best.

[observation, 2014] I developed a rhythmic way of playing that was very percussive and striving, and I really took a lot from Richie Havens, Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, and all those sorts of guitar players. It wasn't until recently, the last ten years, that I started branching out and playing more lead.

It's super important to be in the union because we are in a business where people would do what we do for free. We have rights and benefits because of the union. We went from wandering minstrels to a legitimate business in about a hundred years.

[her advice to young musicians] You have to do it because you love it, and then love it enough to be smart about what you do. See where it takes you, but know there is no destination. There is no place where you say, "I did it". So even if you don't think you are succeeding, you are doing exactly as you are supposed to do, and learning what you are supposed to learn, because it is all about the journey.