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“Being stylish is about enjoying your life and expressing yourself and your inner light.”
“I am the worst influence. If you can’t handle your vices, then I am the Devil.”
“I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it.”
“Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.”
“There is a time and a place for things. Sometimes one needs to put a filter on oneself. That can be a good thing.”
“I’m not like a poker player. I’m not into bluff. My way is to look someone in the eye and tell them the way I’m intending to go. My cards are always on the table.”
“Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don’t fit into boxes.”
“Being in your forties – any woman who isn’t there yet, I just have to say to you: Euphoria is coming to you.”
“I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. We’re both Leos, we understand each other.”
“As the sun sets, we’ve all had those nights where you question your choices and where your life is going.”
“My father was a preacher in Maryland and we had crab feasts – with corn on the cob, but no beer, being Methodist – outside on the church lawn.”
“When you don’t have people in your life pushing you, can you push yourself?”
“It’s been a thrilling journey – I have had to really learn that an orchestra is an entity – it’s a creature. I have been calling it the dragon and the conductor is the dragon tamer. And you just have to… ride and don’t let go and you will be fine.”
“I’ve been known to throw watermelons, backstage, at people who are giving me news I don’t want to hear. But I never aim for the head.”
“At 15, I knew someone whose mother cooked macrobiotic, so I persuaded my mother to go macrobiotic with me.”
“I have never smoked and have always drunk a lot of water, but cleanse, tone and moisturise every day? No way!”
“Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.”
“I think everyone understands grief, the journey it takes us on, whether it’s the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a disappointment. Some people don’t deal with it, the power of it. Some do. Some feel the weight of it and it informs their choices. I’ve had to open up to grief in different contexts.”
“Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that’s slightly different in order to get inspiration.”
“Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine, we can become zombie-like and shut down. It’s about discipline. You have to push yourself.”
“If you have an issue with homosexuality, then it comes to your own fear and your own darkness.”
“There are older men with younger women but you don’t see a lot of older women with younger men. There are some women who have been able to do it but not often.”
“You can be self-empowered and still learning about how you think about things daily.”
“In our minds, love and lust are really separated. It’s hard to find someone that can be kind and you can trust enough to leave your kids with, and isn’t afraid to throw her man up against the wall and lick him from head to toe.”
“Many people lock a part of themselves away. It’s a bit sacred.”
“If I was writing songs just for me I’d only play them in my living room, alone.”
“Guys would sleep with a bicycle if it had the right color lip gloss on. They have no shame. They’re like bull elks in a field.”
“Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.”
“I think you need to have people around you whose standard is high and who don’t accept anything less.”
“Sometimes you have to do what you don’t like to get to where you want to be.”
“There’s room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you’re trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn’t.”
“If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn’t you like to think that’s not all there is? That you haven’t hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them?”
“A key to keeping your husband is getting him to miss you. That keeps a marriage fresh.”
“Life is fleeting. It is to be enjoyed.”
“I’ve got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I’d like even more.”
“Music is always a reflection of what’s going on in the hearts and minds of the culture.”
“I would love to compose something for dance before I kick the bucket, and I’m not closed-minded about the dance, or the dance company.”
“The world that we all knew before, could wake up in feeling safe… now it seems that everything has been turned upside down.”
“I don’t choose to analyze what I have done and I think that is the right choice, because then I won’t be spending my time creating.”
“To me glamour isn’t about being sparkly.”
“I’m a hard worker. I get my hands dirty.”
“My father was strict, but he recognised my ability and got a lot of flak from the church for supporting me.”
“Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.”
“I would love to compose something for dance before I kick the bucket, and I’m not closed-minded about the dance, or the dance company. I would really just love to collaborate on that.”
“When I was little, my mom tells me, I used to say things like, ‘Mom do you hear the string section? Do you hear the string section?’ And she would look at me and say, ‘No honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
“What girls do to each other is beyond description. No chinese torture comes close.”
“You know that saying, bad things don’t happen to good people? That’s a lie.”
“I have so many different personalities in me and I still feel lonely.”
“The violence betwen women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.”
“Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won’t have anything to complain about.”
“I know I’m an acquired taste – I’m anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.”
“For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they’re dykes, and they’re always good fun.”
“I’m a musician first, a food-lover second, a dirty mouth with feet, and a girl last time I checked.”
“Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that’s what it feels like to me. Whether that’s what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.”
“I usually get myself into situations that cause sparks. I mean I’m a girl that likes the storms. I love feeling alive, I love walking out in the cold in my bare feet and feeling the ice on my toes.”
“A lot of the carols were not as you hear them now.”
“So the first job that I got – my father got it for me – he had his clerical collar on, was a gay bar in D.C., it was Mr. Henry’s of Georgetown.”
“I have a rule that I don’t read my press, but then somebody in the crew will be reading it and of course it’s right there, so what do you think I do?”
“An interview will seem very sane to me, and I’ll find out that the journalist was laughing out of the side of his mouth half of the time.”
“I get painted quite a bit as a tragic figure because of some of the stuff that’s happened in my life.”
“I’ve had to keep exploring different ways of presenting the music so I don’t repeat myself.”
“I’m really quite happy to say that in my early 40s, I wake up feeling sexy, and I can’t say I felt that way in my late 20s.”
“Right now, half the world is depressed and they need to be entertained.”
“I like involved projects.”
“I’m driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.”
“My childhood was extreme.”
“My father has a pragmatic mind. He marched with Dr. King in the ’60s, and he’s very much for women’s rights.”
“I like cosy, intimate houses.”
“I became a mom at 37 and having a child has been an emancipation for me.”
“You’d think that in this age, especially in the 21st century – especially with all the technology and all the discoveries that we’ve made – that we would figure out how to tackle abuse.”
“I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom’s family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car – it was the late sixties – and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.”
“I love the classic crooners, but I got that from my mother – she worked in a record store.”
“I think even in a good marriage, especially if you stay together long enough, there are going to be events that happen.”
“There were times that I needed to go to battle, but how I went to battle wasn’t always the best way in.”
“I think having a child can really change you if you’re open to it.”
“There is a phenomenal amount of pressure on women in this industry: they are considered vintage by the time they hit their mid-30s.”
“I felt sidelined by the industry, by the preoccupation with finding something newer, younger.”
“After a while of getting jerked around, you realize what the business is really made up of.”
“When I play live, it’s a conversation that we’re all having with the song, and the audience… their response and relationship with the songs is as valid as my relationship with the songs.”
“This was a time frame when dance music and clubs were having a real impact on culture, and it had an impact on me.”
“I think there’s a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer.”
“I find that in the 21st century, there’s not a lot of compassion for what other people are going through or the walk that they have to walk.”
“I guess my husband is a muse as well.”
“The pop world has really opened its doors.”
“I don’t really cook. There are caterers, and my husband cooks.”
“I was two and a half when I first climbed up and sat at a piano.”
“I’m a conduit for telling people’s stories. It’s a privilege.”
“When I got older, I chose to look at Christianity as another myth.”
“Some of the biggest advocates for feminism seem to believe that in order to feel powerful you have to make another woman subservient, and that is not what feminism is about at all.”
“I don’t kid around.”
“I’ve carved out a career for myself really as a writer.”
“I don’t want to give too much ink to foolish men.”
“There are two ways to wake up. You can wake up thinking about what you know, or you wake up thinking and saying ‘What can I learn?.’ That’s a very different approach.”
“The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me, troubles me as a minister’s daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.”
“I don’t know if the average person really has faith in Washington anymore.”
“There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world.”
“There is an energy that you carry when you’re nurturing another life where you’re protecting first – and once you know that cub is out of the way of the hunter’s gun, you can be a little more daring.”
“I don’t mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else’s object.”
“I want to be an integrated woman.”
“My husband doesn’t know what my songs are about – even when they’re about him. He’s very British in that way. He doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t want to be told.”
“Being able to still make records is a privilege. I don’t take it casually.”
“I don’t see music as working.”
“I’m not not going to stop giving away what I feel about something.”
“I know people sometimes have this fantasy about Cornwall. But the Cornish are so grounded.”
“Cornwall is one of the most beautiful places, with great people – there’s not a great downside to it.”
“You don’t leave people who can’t defend themselves.”
“After a while, though, you realize that a whole slew of young singer-songwriter piano players are getting compared to you. That’s when you feel the passage of time is occurring.”
“Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.”
“There’s a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.”
“A lot of songs are derivative of each other.”
“People listen to music the way they want to listen to music.”
“I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.”
“I get tired of wearing the same thing all the time too.”
“I wanted to do something creatively, having been a beached whale for many months and nursing my daughter.”
“It’s fun to write your set list 20 minutes before and keep the crew very much on their toes.”
“Our world is a huge mess right now, and not big enough for masses of intolerant people.”
“Sometimes it seems like we’re closer to our manicurists than we are our own souls. We have to find ways to get in touch with that and to listen to it and to hear it.”
“Some people say, I’d give anything to be 30 again. Well, I really wouldn’t. I didn’t enjoy being 30.”
“When we get in a routine we can become zombie-like and shut down.”
“I can see how the young girls really get hurt when their moms are critical, or vice versa when they’re overly critical of their moms. It can be so painful.”
“When you’re in your 20s, there’s maybe a little room for you to not be at the top of your artistic game, if you look good on a magazine cover. When you’re not on the cover of the magazines anymore, then you realize that the work has to be great.”
“When the mothers start to shatter, then everything just comes undone.”
“My favorite saying is, ‘If it’s too loud, turn it up.’”
“My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.”
“I’m a classic emerald green Sixties Jaguar that nobody can own, but my husband is allowed to drive.”
“People assume that all artists make for terrible business people, but I’m in complete charge of my own career.”
“There’s a side to this industry that nurtures divas who can’t write. It’s a big business.”
“I produce the records. I don’t hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will – for commercial purposes.”
“Even if everything else is downplayed, I’ll wear good shoes.”
“I had a very strict upbringing with my dad and was very close to my mum, who was extremely loving.”
“I don’t feel I’m as good a mum as my mum was.”
“Romance is important to me, and to have a romance with your husband takes a bit of doing. The key is to make sure your partner misses you. That means you have to take yourself away.”
“There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine.”
“Tori’s my legal name. My niece and nephews, they all call me Aunt Ellen, because I went by my middle name years ago, before I turned 18.”
“My parents think I’m better under pressure.”
“You have to be clear what your message is and what you’re doing. I mean, Miley Cyrus is an amazing talent, and sometimes you kind of just want to say, ‘We know you’re not Hannah Montana anymore. We know that, my dear. My darling. Now, go be great.’”
“My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I’d crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.”
“I was very close to my mother as the youngest of three. She was my playmate.”
“Things go wrong all the time; you can’t be precious about it.”
“I like involved projects. I’m driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.”
“A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that’s slightly different in order to get inspiration.”
“I have built my world through Native American mythology.”
“My ears are huge. If there’s ever a problem with a plane I’m on, they could just put me on the wing and I’ll land the sucker.”
“I started playing the piano when I was about two and got a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore when I was five. But I left when I was 11.”
“Not everybody wants to have the same career. I think what’s difficult is when you have two people that do something very, very similar and they both, say, want the limelight. That’s very tricky.”
“When one doesn’t want the limelight, but is also creative in developing whatever it is they are, then you can have two equal people that aren’t competing against each other. I think when you are in the same field, it’s difficult to leave it outside and not compete. Then when the doors are closed; that pervades everything.”
“I’m very at home working with mythology.”
“For a song cycle to work, you have to feel these things when you hear them and you either have an emotional reaction to it or you don’t. The plotline is something that gets woven together in the back-story.”
“The key things are about power and about growing up and realizing as you grow up that there are consequences for the choices you make, especially when you get seduced by power.”
“I’m not very social when I’m off the promo trail, because I step into wife and mother mode. It’s very reclusive.”
“Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they’re little.”
“If you think a child is going to be your accessory… it’s not like a micro pig. It’s not about putting them in front of the television. You need to read to them at night.”
“My brother was a fantastic cheerleader for my development as a musician. He was almost 10 years older than me and would really push me to develop as a songwriter.”
“I’ve worked with many powerful men in the music industry.”
“I’m a mother, and that’s really important. Today, the mother and the musician can sit next to each other. Even when the musician is out there in full swing, the mother doesn’t get switched off.”