Tori Amos Quotes

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

Being in your forties - any woman who isn't there yet, I just have to say to you: Euphoria is coming to you.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I like involved projects.

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.

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.

Got a little red line that tells you, boy where the razor's been.

Dance with the sufis, celebrate your top ten in the charts of pain.

Nothing's gonna stop me from floating

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

It's not as if the stories merge to a point where you think they are your life, but you do let them in the front door and the back door, and it's okay that sometimes certain characters stay for dinner.

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

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

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

Neil says "Hi" by the way...

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

Carbon made only wants to be unmade.

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

I am the worst influence. If you can't handle your vices, then I am the Devil.

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.

I see the dream and I see the nightmare, and I believe you can't have the dream without the nightmare

I want to be an integrated woman.

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

When I went on this trip I had a sexual/spiritual experience with a creature named Lucifer.

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

They say you were something in those formative years.

On some of my darkest days, Lucifer's the one who comes and gives me an ice cream.

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

I'm the thing that fundamentalist Christians cringe over ...

Music has an alchemical quality. And there's more than one voice on the piano. You have two hands. One can be playing a celestial melody while the other is doing quite the opposite. The joining of the profane and the sacred, or the passionate and the compassionate, happens right there on the keyboard.

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.

We don't often see our own stories. Good artists are the ones that whisper our own stories back to us.

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.

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

It's hard to hide a hundred girls in your hair.

For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. I made a conscious choice when I put (the song) 'Me and a Gun' on the record not to stay a victim anymore.

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

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.

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

I don't want to sit on the sidelines and not value the gift of being here. Instead of the idea of time ticking away, the grains of sand running out, I try to think of time as giving me another grain of sand, another gift. So time passing is an accumulation, rather than a diminishing.

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.

An angel's face is tricky to wear constantly.

I know that mess spelled backwards is ssem and I felt much better armed with that information.

There were times that I needed to go to battle, but how I went to battle wasn't always the best way in.

You know that saying, bad things don't happen to good people? That's a lie.

I was very close to my mother as the youngest of three. She was my playmate.

Tell me you're crazy, maybe then I'll understand.

Look, I'm standing naked before you; Don't you want more than my sex? I can scream as loud as your last one, But I can't claim innocence.

Getting people to go above and beyond the call of duty can be achieved but only if you, the artist, are willing to go above and beyond any and all calls of duty yourself.

Neil [Gaiman, creator of the comic Sandman, featuring the Amos-based character Delirium] believes that faeries have gone beyond cool. They've transcended cool. I just think alternate realities make you a good writer. If your work is any more than one dimension, you believe in faeries. I'm sure I'll start thinking now about all the people I know who don't believe, that I quite like. We can still go have a pint. Not the Chardonnay, though.

Over the last few hours I've allowed myself to feel defeated, and just like she said if you allow yourself to feel the way you really feel, maybe you won't be afraid of that feeling anymore.

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.

Our world is a huge mess right now, and not big enough for masses of intolerant people.

I really respect anybody who stands by their truth.

I wanted to marry Lucifer ... I don't consider Lucifer an evil force ... I feel his presence with his music. I feel like he comes and sits on my piano ...

I'm standing naked before you. Don't you want more than sex?

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.

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

As soon as you stop being humbled by the creation process, Little One, it is so much bigger than you are. And when you think it is you and you are it, it will drown you or burn you alive.

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

It's about realizing, painfully, you've kept that voice inside yourself, locked away from even yourself. And you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces. You realize you've become your own jailer.

93. "Threads that are golden don't break easily.

I don't own a computer. I have a nine-foot piano in my home to compose my messages. Why would I want a one-foot computer to do the same thing?

People think I'm nuts because I can sit in a room and be happy by myself.

Boy, you better pray that I bleed real soon.

The music is the magic carpet that other things take naps on.

There is a time and a place for things. Sometimes one needs to put a filter on oneself. That can be a good thing.

Do you know who we are Mum?" And at that moment I just look into her blue planets for eyes, and she says, "We are Daughters of Song, Mama." And at that I jump up with new life, pick her up, and say, "Now let's go play"_____

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

Let's be honest. You let yourself be pulled in because it felt good to be wanted, needed. But then it went too far, as projected images always do. If it's not a real image, but one that has been projected on to you, then you can keep up the masquerade for only so long before the mask cracks and the paint on the mask peels away.

When they say take from my body, I think I'll take from mine instead. Getting off, getting off while they're all down stairs.

I believe in rainbows and all of that. But there are darker colors ... and it's the shade that defines the light.

I used to get really pissed off that my life was so dictated by when this Jesus guy was born and when he was dying every year. I felt really resentful that I couldn't get on with my own life because I was so busy with his.

Your apocalypse was fab.

You don't have to justify anything. Being pissed off is absolutely ok.

Even a glamorous bitch can be in need.

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

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.

Baker, baker, can you explain, if truly his heart was made of icing.

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.

If you have an issue with homosexuality, then it comes to your own fear and your own darkness.

I had a very strict upbringing with my dad and was very close to my mum, who was extremely loving.

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

I think all the boys that write the screaming stuff would write the best love songs ... because they have the most to hide. The guys that are in the most pain are usually the ones with the biggest hearts.

I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets, looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets.

Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you want to be.

I said
she's gone
but I'm alive, I'm alive
I'm coming in the graveyard
to sing you to sleep now

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

My father has a pragmatic mind. He marched with Dr. King in the '60s, and he's very much for women's rights.

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.

Sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here, silent all these years

An ounce of breast milk is even more potent than the finest tequila.

The romantic myth of the artist says that you are the Source. I have no illusion about that. Native Americans don't believe they are the Source. They have access to the Source. Endless access. But don't get confused.

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.

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