And that's where I really come from. There's an aspect of human nature in which we want to think we're better than somebody else. They're a different color. They speak a different language. They have a different name for the Creator. Whatever it is, that makes it okay for me to hate them, to try to get some of their land or some of their resources.

We must begin to make what I call "conscious choices," and to really recognize that we are the same. It's from that place in my heart that I write my songs. And it's a conscious choice. Peace is a conscious choice.

I believe that we are here for each other, not against each other. Everything comes from an understanding that you are a gift in my life--whoever you are, whatever our differences.

I would so much like young people to have a sense of the gift that they are. Not many of them feel like that. We don't teach kids how to feel, we don't give them the words to go by. I think the biggest problem in the world is that we have a generation of young people, and maybe two, who don't think it's going to get any better.

I would make my job a work of art. I would like whatever it is that I'm doing--everyone's experience of me, everyone's interaction with me, everyone's discussion, conversation, relationship with me--[to be] an event within which they get to see who they are. I would make of my life a work of art.