I obtained a job at the Library of Congress. I loved books, so I felt at home. I was going to end up, I thought, majoring in English and teach at the college level.

Participation, I think, or one of the best methods of educating.

I started my career at the top and have been working my way downwards ever since.

Technically, I’ve been retired for some time now. All I ever do is occasionally write songs for friends, such as one, for a friend who had just turned 80. I wrote a song for him...

I published, privately, a collection of my serious poetry I had written over the years. I only published 50 copies, which I gave to friends, in a special deluxe edition. It was ridiculously expensive but...

I summoned my courage and auditioned for a choir job in a Catholic Church and landed a job there. It paid about thirty dollars a month.

The Musicians was recorded as a quartet by Dinah Shore, Phil Harris, Tony Martin and Betty Hutton. It was not a hit; it came and went.

I was asked by a group to write a song on the theme of brotherhood. This was before women’s liberation, when brotherhood meant men and women both, so I wrote the song. Since I had...

I taught myself to drive. I hope that the child in me never dies.

They say poets write mostly for themselves; if anyone else likes it, well and good, if not, it doesn’t matter; certainly, not to me.

With sincere modesty, if there is such a thing, I have never thought of legacy at all. I am always grateful if people like what I have done. A legacy is something no one can...

I wrote the Brotherhood song for no money out of my deep feelings about humanity, and because I was flattered that whatever talents I had, had been recognized.

Things are forgotten and then perhaps picked up again, if we’re lucky, it lasts… if not, then it’s in the lap of the gods. The important thing was to do some work that I liked...

A characteristic of older folksongs, in most cases, is that we don’t know their composers or authors. Older folksongs were written often with no commercial purpose in mind. They were passed down by word of...

I’m afraid I talk a lot, too much, perhaps. I should have been a lawyer or a college professor or a windy politician, though I’m glad I am not any of these.

When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I...

As I grew up, I was interested in other areas, too, especially literature. It became a major love of mine. Later, it became a difficult choice for me as to whether to major in music...

In the 50s, I wrote the lyrics to an old melody called Melody of Love, which was number one for a while. It later turned into a major hit.

When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write...

For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often, some persons would say, write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission. The artists would come up with a...

Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn’t thought of in over...

When I listen to music today, it is about 99 percent classical. I rarely even listen to folk music, the music of my own specialty, because folk music is to me more limited than classical...

I ended up performing on a full time basis and I never got to Julliard at all.

Later in the public schools of Philadelphia, where I was born, music was a very strong pervasive element, which struck me with great force.

When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or ’31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their...

I have a great interest in a number of things, perhaps too many. I admire people who seem to concentrate on only one fixed discipline to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Most performers don’t admit this, because it sounds negative and performers are not supposed to be negative, but when I was on the road, I was lonely.

When people ask me what I do, strangers on a plane, perhaps, I tell them that I think. Thinking is excellent exercise, as much as swimming or jogging.

I met my wife in Washington, D.C. I was a senior in college. WW II was about to descend upon us. Jobs were starting to open up after a prolonged depression.

My Dad died during the flu epidemic in 1918 when I was 4 years old. He left a lot of classical recordings behind that I began listening to at an early age, so he must...