Tori Amos's Quotes

I felt sidelined by the industry, by the preoccupation with finding something newer, younger.

I get painted quite a bit as a tragic figure because of some of the stuff that's happened in my life.

I get tired of wearing the same thing all the time too.

I guess my husband is a muse as well.

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?

I have never smoked and have always drunk a lot of water, but cleanse, tone and moisturise every day? No way!

I know people sometimes have this fantasy about Cornwall. But the Cornish are so grounded.

I like cosy, intimate houses.

I like involved projects.

I love the classic crooners, but I got that from my mother - she worked in a record store.

I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.

I think having a child can really change you if you're open to it.

I think you need to have people around you whose standard is high and who don't accept anything less.

I want to be an integrated woman.

I wanted to do something creatively, having been a beached whale for many months and nursing my daughter.

I was two and a half when I first climbed up and sat at a piano.

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'm a conduit for telling people's stories. It's a privilege.

I'm driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.

I'm not not going to stop giving away what I feel about something.

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.

I've carved out a career for myself really as a writer.

I've got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I'd like even more.

I've had to keep exploring different ways of presenting the music so I don't repeat myself.

If I was writing songs just for me I'd only play them in my living room, alone.

It's fun to write your set list 20 minutes before and keep the crew very much on their toes.

Life is fleeting. It is to be enjoyed.

Music is always a reflection of what's going on in the hearts and minds of the culture.

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.

My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.

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.

My favorite saying is, 'If it's too loud, turn it up.'

People assume that all artists make for terrible business people, but I'm in complete charge of my own career.

People listen to music the way they want to listen to music.

Right now, half the world is depressed and they need to be entertained.

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.

Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.

Some people say, I'd give anything to be 30 again. Well, I really wouldn't. I didn't enjoy being 30.

The pop world has really opened its doors.

The world that we all knew before, could wake up in feeling safe... now it seems that everything has been turned upside down.

There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world.

There is a phenomenal amount of pressure on women in this industry: they are considered vintage by the time they hit their mid-30s.

There's a side to this industry that nurtures divas who can't write. It's a big business.

This was a time frame when dance music and clubs were having a real impact on culture, and it had an impact on me.

To me glamour isn't about being sparkly.

Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.

What girls do to each other is beyond description. No chinese torture comes close.

When I got older, I chose to look at Christianity as another myth.

When the mothers start to shatter, then everything just comes undone.

You can be self-empowered and still learning about how you think about things daily.

You don't leave people who can't defend themselves.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

People out there must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it's the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves, as I have done.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.