Tori Amos quotes:

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  • Being stylish is about enjoying your life and expressing yourself and your inner light.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.'

  • 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.

  • Cornwall is one of the most beautiful places, with great people - there's not a great downside to it.

  • 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.

  • Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.

  • I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. We're both Leos, we understand each other.

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

  • 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 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.

  • 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.

  • A key to keeping your husband is getting him to miss you. That keeps a marriage fresh.

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

  • 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. I would really just love to collaborate on that.

  • 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.

  • Even if everything else is downplayed, I'll wear good shoes.

  • Things go wrong all the time; you can't be precious about it.

  • I'm a musician first, a food-lover second, a dirty mouth with feet, and a girl last time I checked.

  • I have so many different personalities in me and I still feel lonely.

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

  • 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 became a mom at 37 and having a child has been an emancipation for me.

  • My parents think I'm better under pressure.

  • 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?

  • Life is fleeting. It is to be enjoyed.

  • 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'm a hard worker. I get my hands dirty.

  • 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 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 don't want to give too much ink to foolish men.

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

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

  • 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 are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

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

  • Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they're little.

  • Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.

  • 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.

  • When you don't have people in your life pushing you, can you push yourself?

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

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 father was strict, but he recognised my ability and got a lot of flak from the church for supporting me.

  • I think even in a good marriage, especially if you stay together long enough, there are going to be events that happen.

  • I know I'm an acquired taste - I'm anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.

  • If you call me a new-age, airy-fairy, hippie-dippy airhead I will shove my crystals up your ass.

  • I think that people who can't believe in faeries aren't worth knowing. I just think that alternate realities make you a good writer. If your work is any more than one dimension, you believe in faeries.

  • Most people would rather be sheep than stand on their own with antlers on.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • It's emotional blackmail to say if you're a good businesswoman and a musician, you're betraying your music.

  • 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.

  • The violence betwen women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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've always seen the songs as having a consciousness. Since I was two-and-a-half they would come to me from nowhere. I never thought that I was conjuring them by myself, and I was always grateful they would come and visit... They've always been very much alive. They don't have a physical body like we do but there seems to be an awareness.

  • I like cosy, intimate houses.

  • I'm obsessed with crocodiles and getting eaten by one. When I hear that someone's been eaten by a crocodile or shark, I just get all gooey. I start salivating.

  • Confucius does his crossword with a pen.

  • To heal the wound, you have to go into the dark night of the soul.

  • Haze all clouding up in my mind in the daze of the why it could've never been.

  • A lot of songs are derivative of each other.

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

  • Women must understand that simply attacking or hating men is just another form of disempowerment. A woman has to realize that when she makes a man crawl it doesn't give her power.

  • 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.

  • For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they're dykes, and they're always good fun.

  • I'm a classic emerald green Sixties Jaguar that nobody can own, but my husband is allowed to drive.

  • It's [a miscarriage] all very thief-in-the-night. No one really knows what to say. You go into the emergency room, you think you're going to be a mum and you walk out empty. It's all neat and tidy, there's this potential being in your life and you're empty - all cleaned up and put back together, but completely shattered.

  • In life, sometimes everything falls into place, and sometimes everything just falls to pieces. The key is to begin creating with these fallen pieces. By improvising, you'll create something magical that might be the best thing you've ever accomplished

  • Anyone who doesn't belive in Faeries, isn't worth knowing.

  • Womanhood is a whole different thing from girlhood. Girlhood is a gift...Womanhood is a choice.

  • I'm a grown woman. I've earned my experiences, my scars.

  • Adolescence is that time when I think, it can be- it's the cruelest place on Earth. It can really be heartless.

  • Your worst enemies are made when you ignore people. Those boys in America who shot dead classmates recently, didn't do that because they woke up with a positive self image that morning and then felt like slaughtering their friends.

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

  • I'm not somebody that gets played a lot at parties and weddings. I mean, you know, you mention my name and you get an eye roll, until, of course, you're jumping off a bridge.

  • I'm a tomato freak, but sometimes you have to get it in ketchup form for people to be able to open to tomatoes.

  • We are all fairies living underneath a leaf of a lily pad.

  • 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.

  • Though I can't change what happened, I can choose how to react. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up.

  • Many people lock a part of themselves away. It's a bit sacred.

  • In my new life, no room for a lost boy.

  • Muhammad, my friend, I'm getting very scared. Teach me how to love my brothers who don't know the law, and what about the deal on the flying trapeze?

  • She's been everybody else's girl, maybe one day she'll be her own.

  • If you sing to the mermaids, they come when you're drowning.

  • A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • That's the thing about letting old lovers go. You don't stop loving some of them. There are a couple you love no less than you ever did. Not to mention namesbut I'm still in love with a couple. You're not going to try and make it work again, but if they needed you, you'd drop everything.

  • 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.

  • 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 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.

  • These precious things, let them bleed.

  • Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.

  • 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.

  • Girls you've gotta know when it's time to turn the page.

  • 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.

  • And maybe she had certain beliefs that if you love somebody, [you're] gonna like them too. And that isn't necessarily true.

  • 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.

  • The violence between women is unbelievable...women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.

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

  • So, you can make me come, that doesn't make you Jesus.

  • Everybody told me this 'girl on the piano' thing was never going to work.

  • I do believe that we all are, fundamentally, divided creatures. Emotions split from intellect, spirit from flesh and far too often sexuality is disconnected from what we feel, and are, as total human beings. But how, for example, can anyone have an understanding of the virgin if they don't also have an understanding of the prostitute, the saint and sinner in one body?

  • I hurt myself today to see if I could feel. I hurt myself, you said to try to make him feel. So I hurt myself again to see if he'd see me. I hurt myself again and no, he never could see me.

  • 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.

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

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