Fact Check: Joan Baez Once Said, 'You Don't Get To Choose How You're Going to Die or When'

Claim:

American folk singer Joan Baez once said: “You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.”

Rating:

For years, Facebook, X, Reddit, and other social media users have shared a quote attributed to American folk singer Joan Baez that reads: "You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now."

(Facebook user The Shift Network)

Full-text search results for a section of the quotation on Internet Archive and Google Books returned 342 and 559 results respectively as of this writing. Most of them were quote anthologies, yearbooks, and self-help books that used the quotation but provided no detailed citation information beyond Baez's name.

However, sorting the results by date revealed that the earliest published appearance of the quote was in Baez's 1968 book "Daybreak." Sometimes described as an autobiography, "Daybreak" is a loosely organized collection of Baez's thoughts and reminiscences.

As it originally appeared in "Daybreak," the quote, which appears in context in the screenshot below, read: "I said you don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now."

(Internet Archive)

The quote is part of a section of "Daybreak" titled "What Would You Do If," which takes the form of a philosophical dialogue about pacifism and nonviolence taking place between two unnamed figures. This section of the book, including the quote investigated here, was also included as part of an excerpt published in an August 1968 issue of the Atlantic magazine.

Because Snopes was able to track the quote down to its original publication in a book authored by Baez, we have rated this claim as "Correct Attribution."

Sources:

Baez, Joan. Daybreak. New York, Dial Press, 1968. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/daybreakbaez00baez.

---. "My Life Is a Crystal Teardrop." The Atlantic, 1 Aug. 1968. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1968/08/joan-baez-my-life-is-a-crystal-teardrop-daybreak/659301/.

"Book Reviews, Sites, Romance, Fantasy, Fiction." Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/joan-baez/daybreak-4/. Accessed 30 July 2024.

Gootman, Marilyn E. When a Friend Dies: A Book for Teens About Grieving & Healing. Free Spirit Publishing, 2020.

The 1960's : Words of a Decade. Kansas City, Mo. : Andrews and McMeel, 1995. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780836207132.