Alanis Morissette's Quotes

I didn't want to be one of those women who wake up at 63 years old and realize they've missed the window of opportunity for marriage and children.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

I find as an artist if I'm not expressed relatively consistently, I get really depressed.

I get angry at myself for staying in relationships way too long.

I grew up in a very masculine environment. So I was around a lot of men, my brothers and their friends. There was just a lot of guys around.

I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.

I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old.

I make up new lyrics to well-known lullabies. Mostly because I don't actually know a lot of the lyrics.

I really do see that anywhere I am, whether it's doing interviews a hundred in a row, that every situation I'm in, I'm at choice in the matter.

I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.

I think quite spiritually of myself. I feel like I'm here to support the human evolution.

I think some fans want everything to stay they same because they want to stay the same.

I thought the more famous I became, the more friendships I would have, but the opposite was true.

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s.

I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

I'll be writing records until I'm dead, whether people like it or not!

I'll be writing songs till I die. There's just no question.

I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

I'm about 90 percent vegan. I think veganism is really well suited for training, at least for me anyway.

I've been really enjoying writing articles and writing music and music for movies.

In the past, I had workaholic issues.

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me.

Making a movie requires 20 to 500 people to make and a lot of money and the stakes are a lot higher.

Music will always be a part of my life. I love music and I don't care how many units I sell.

My greatest environments in which I can grow, or grow up, is in personal romantic relationships with a man.

My message to anyone who's afraid that they can't write music when they're happy is 'Just trust the passion.' The passion can write a lot of things.

My three addictions of choice are food, love and work.

The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.

The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.

The whole celebrity thing is not something I'm overly interested in. I don't pop up at parties. It's just not my thing.

There were a lot of people who were a little afraid of the rage or blaming stance I was taking, and find what I am doing now more refreshing.

They're different kinds of challenges depending upon what phase of life I'm in.

Unless I really loved it and felt really passionate about it, I would just kind of abort the song and start a new one.

Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

You live, you learn.

I think it's irresponsible when celebrities imply they're doing it all themselves. My son has aunties and uncles around all the time, and my husband is my hero. He's really full-on. I couldn't do it any other way.

At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.

I have a profound empathy for people who are in the public eye, whether they manifest it themselves or whether it happened by accident - it doesn't matter to me. I think there's a great misunderstanding of what it is to be famous.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

I think it's child abuse to have someone in the public eye too young. Society basically values wealth and fame and power at the cost of well-being. In the case of a child, it's at the cost of someone's natural development. It's already hard enough to develop.

I think there is no better way to invite a human being to view their body differently than by inviting them to be an athlete, by revering one's body as an instrument rather than just an ornament.

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.

I'm a liability to them - I'm a woman, I'm empowered, I'm an artist. I've had executives who can't come to my shows they're so scared of me. I've been a thorn in many people's sides just by existing.

I'm really clear about what my life mission is now. There's no more depression or lethargy, and I feel like I've returned to the athlete I once was. I'm integrating all the parts of me - jock, musician, writer, poet, philosopher - and becoming stronger as a result.

To me the biggest irony of this lifetime that I'm living is that for someone who thrives in the public eye in the creative ways that I do, I actually don't enjoy being in the public eye.

When someone says that I'm angry it's actually a compliment. I have not always been direct with my anger in my relationships, which is part of why I'd write about it in my songs because I had such fear around expressing anger as a woman.

Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye, people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they're here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

But I love to entertain. My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

I need to be performing. I need to be acting. I need to be designing a condo and ripping down walls and buying new plates and looking at fashion magazines. There always has to be some movement in the artistic department for me to not get really, really low.

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

I think a common misperception about attuning and tending to a child's needs so constantly is that they don't grow in their independence, but I think that the opposite is true.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

I'm clearly most well known for my music. Eventually, ultimately, I'll be writing books. I'm still writing articles now. I just consider myself a writer.

I'm excited about there being more of a sisterhood these days. Back in the '90s there was a lot of hate - the women I looked up to as artists were dissing me! It's not so patriarchal these days - there's more love and a lot less hate!

I've been doing a lot of different cross-training and kickboxing and Capoeira and kite surfing, and I've just really been back to what I consider my original athletic self.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I've also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

In LA, where I live, it's all about perfectionism. Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.

It's not just the 'Grammys' that I've pulled out of. I also pulled out of the English awards as well. The reason that I wanted to pull out was because I believe very much that the music industry as a whole is mainly concerned with material success.

My brother says that I was writing songs about fate while he was off playing soccer. Now I tell him he's 33 and being a professional while I'm playing soccer with my friends. Ha!

Over the last couple of years, I've really worked toward balancing my life out more, having a little bit more time with friends, family and my boyfriend. There was a period of time when they were way down the list. It was all about music and touring and if everything fell by the wayside, so be it.

There's cleanliness to how I eat now. I'm much more in tune with my body, so now that I'm so in tune based on having become a semivegan, I can tell what foods affect energy levels. I can tell when I've been eating particularly high nutrient foods or I can tell when my glycemic levels are all over the place.

What I try to keep in mind is that there are going to be a lot of articles that are going to be misrepresentative of what I'm about as a person and as a writer.

What influenced me was Tori Amos, who was unapologetic about expressing anger through music, and Sinead O'Connor. Those two in particular were really moving for me, and very inspiring, before I wrote 'Jagged Little Pill.'

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to - in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet - very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

When I'm off the road, my husband and I recharge our batteries. It's a day of deep rest and connection with the spiritual, and that can be anything - going for a walk in nature, being in silence, burning incense.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

We're taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they're of equal value to happiness, excitement and inspiration.

We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect.