Black women have historically had the most to lose and have therefore been the fiercest fighters for justice.

When you sit at the feet of an elder, it changes you.

I'm really taken with 'Calling Me Home' by Alice Gerrard.

Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you.

For me the bare feet are grounding. I'm connected to the Earth in a way that I cannot be any other way.

I love singing opera, but the world surrounding it is not me. I want to be barefoot. I want to be in control of my own career. I want to put on a show. In the opera world, you wait for people to call you until you get to a certain level. In the folk world, it's a lot easier to have control from the beginning.

I don't watch 'Game of Thrones.' I don't watch TV. I don't watch Hulu.

I couldn't stand the politics in opera.

Music affects people in a way that bare facts can't.

I love being on the road and I love my band, but also need to be with my kids more and I need to be creating more.

In the commercial music world, the folk world, we sell records and concert tickets - this is the way I make a living. You go out, you make your art and hopefully people will put their money down for it. But it's getting hard. I have to be on the road so much to keep the lights on.

There is music out there that is commercially driven, whether you like it or not. That's a peculiarly American innovation. We innovated the commercial music business.

When you are a commercial music artist, your music depends on your popularity.

I'm discovering so much about how invisible, othered and dismissed the Islamic world is, in terms of the massive effects it had on European music and culture.

Othering people is something that humans have done for ever.

If I wasn't touring, I wasn't making money. When I got the MacArthur, I could get off that hamster wheel. It meant I didn't have to do anything.

I have to continue to work, and I have to be touring, because that's how I earn a living.

People who put Europe in the center of the universe, they're very fragile.

I'm really interested in history and when I looked into the settlers who came to my home state, North Carolina, I found that the largest settlement of Hebridean islanders outside of Scotland was right there in North Carolina.

I've always liked women singers and appreciate a good story being told. That's what country music used to do on the radio.

When I got into college, I got into operatic vocalists, like Leontyne Price.

It's kind of remarkable, everything that's happened to me. It's been such a whirlwind, but in a good way.

I grew up listening to country music. I got into traditional stuff later, but I listened to the commercial stuff of the '90s, especially the women who were so strong, like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kathy Mattea. It's a great art form.

I don't consider myself at the kind of stature of somebody who can play five cities on a tour, and that's it. I go where I'm wanted, and I've always had the rural areas of the country. We've always gone there, since the Carolina Chocolate Drops. There's a fan base that's there, and if I can afford to do it, I do it.