“When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.”

“Love like that is what they make movies about. It’s the thing you’re supposed to want, the answer to every question, the song that you’re supposed to sing. But love like that can be too big, too. It can be something you shouldn’t be trusted to hold when you’re the kind of person who drops the eggs and breaks the remote control. Love doesn’t break easily, I found. But people do.”

“Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men”

“Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.”

“I felt emptied-out and singing with echoes, unrecognizable to myself: that particular feeling like your own house on the day you move out.”

“The audience keeps singing, keeps making my case, and I just keep strumming until I get close enough to see her eyes. And then I start singing the chorus. Right to her. And she smiles at me, and it’s like we’re the only two people out here, the only ones who know what’s happening. Which is that this song we’re all singing together is being rewritten. It’s no longer an angry plea shouted to the void. Right here, on this stage, in front of eighty thousand people, it’s becoming something else. This is our new vow.”