Natalie Merchant Quotes

I don't have a lot of thrilling anecdotes about my career or personal life. All the stuff that is interesting is private and I wouldn't want people to know.

I would never do a printed memoir. I've been asked to publish a memoir from years by different publishers and literary agents. I think it wouldn't be great for me because all I'd really want to talk about it music and I'd rather just play it.

Have I been blind, have I been lost, inside myself and my own mind?

The research phase was really fascinating - I'm not a closeted nerd, I'm an out-of-the-closet nerd.

I think of myself as a musician and not a celebrity. Celebrity status is something you have to deliberately pursue - I couldn't imagine myself seeking that.

Bred for one purpose only, to die in man's sport.

Have I been wrong? Have I been wise to shut my eyes?

Be true to yourself, and, um, don't worry about some large companies' quarterly profit index.

I would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics.

Greta's cedar hope chest
Is full of pamphlets
Glass shelves of romantic vignettes
A journal laced with sedimentary prose
Norma gathers and collects vintage photoplays
Hair combs valentines
Lillian allows the animals to scratch
And the leather crack
And the mail collect in the box as coatings peel
Agnes veiled cathedral dweller
Smiles with benevolent pain

But it's Katrina's fair
Tuesday morning
As she with caution unlatches the flat door
She alone cascades to the basement
Careful not to spoil her
Calico printed pinafore
Composite traits and mannerists
All others dissipate

Marguerite vigilant
She dwells upon frigid casements
Sarah's thoughts in high velocity
Accusations always pierce and pass
Clara abandons her passions for distastes
A Miss Lenora P. Sinclair
Early for coffee in the pool
"I'm resituating all your words"
Capital Space Colon Paragraph

Sylvia keeps beasts in jars labeled by
Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family
Genus
Species

But it's Katrina's fair
Tuesday morning
As she with caution unlatches the flat door
She alone cascades to the basement
Careful not to spoil her
Calico printed pinafore
Composite traits and mannerists
All others dissipate

Down the way a silk design
This face is mine
Tis I, Ka

I think I don't invest so much time in thinking about people's sexuality. I just take people as individuals.

I've had a large gay following for many years and have been quite aware of that.

I think the most enduring lesson I was taught through my experiences of being a Girl Scout was that I was a member of a larger community. I out-grew my uniforms and badges years ago, but the memories of visiting nursing homes or organizing Earth Day tree plantings or my summers camping with girls from all different backgrounds will stay with me always.

I've always considered it a great privilege to be a musician, I've never lost sight of that.

Literature gives us a window into other people's experiences in other places, in other times, so I thought it would be really interesting to investigate how different people had written about motherhood, and childhood.

It's really wonderful to be able to be nobody, and then have a moment when I can be somebody, and then go right back to being nobody again.

I was shy. Bookish. The kind of 13-year-old girl who, instead of having a boyfriend, would have a crush on a dead, 19th-century author!

When it came time to sequence the album, the new arrangements really demanded a different order. They were so different than they were before that the old sequence didn't work anymore.

I've raised my daughter with no television.

I think I have a really diverse audience. I've had people from all sorts of sexual persuasions.

I feel we all have the obligation, myself. I want to live in a more humane, civilized society, and I feel like the only way we're going to achieve that is if we all take it upon ourselves. I just wish we could be a more caring society. I feel like we're social Darwinists who believe that everyone has to make it on their own. But the reality is that we all don't start out on the same footing.

Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.

And in the stockyard, beasts did climb their barriers.

My mother was a single working mother; she started having children very young. There was a tension inside her about who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do and how she couldn't achieve the things she wanted to.

TV holds a close second to cars for destroying our society. It's a failed experiment.

I go to the river from time to time to ponder over the crazy days in my life. Watch the river flow, ease my mind and soul where I go.

I've walked these streets, in a carnival of sights to see. All the cheap thrill seekers, the vendors & the dealers, they crowded around me. Have I been blind? Have I been lost, inside myself and my own mind? Hypnotized, mesmerized, by what my eyes have seen? I've walked these streets, in a spectacle of wealth & poverty. In the diamond market, the scarlet welcome carpet that they just rolled out for me.

There is one tradition in America I am proud to inherit. It is our first freedom and the truest expression of our Americanism: the ability to dissent without fear. It is our right to utter the words, I disagree. We must feel at liberty to speak those words to our neighbors, our clergy, our educators, our news media, our lawmakers and, above all, to the one among us we elect President.

I can't remove the autobiographical slant from the things I write. You always bring yourself into what you're writing.

For your kindness, I'm in debt to you. For your selflessness, my admiration.

I'm going to be shaking my booty when I'm 55.