A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.
I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience
The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American
I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved
If I had been at a University I don't think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don't think I have been as successful
I just don't think one person has that much to contribute to any subject
If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.
Moral restrictions tend to become lax in a foreign country, since the fear of social opinion disappears.
Their lost voices must continue to be heard.
I took up violin because my best mate had taken it up, so I did likewise.