Out of the Mouth of the Goddess

These are quotes that ive gathered from around the net and various other sources, including my ever useful copy of Kalen Rogers' All These Years, as well as Elizabeth Lauren Perry's Tori Amos quote of the day page and service ( she will e mail the quotes to you daily. visit the link there on my links page. or e mail her here and thanks, elizabeth:) i dont claim to have a patent on them or know Tori. i just thought that it might be a nice idea.

Click here to hear "Crucify" midi



"I believe in energy, everything is energy. And therefore sometimes magic can be created if somebody is open to letting energy do what it does, instead of being so cynical, that you miss magic happening. I mean, the reason I thank the fairies, frankly, is because I'm not stupid."
(thanks, vanya, for this quote!)

(on her trip to iceland): "that's where they still speak the original Norse language; it's the only territory that still speaks it. I have a very strong connection with the vikings."

(on "Little Earthquakes"): it represents "all my fifty different personalities called back home and melted into one."

(on her Vox magaziine photo with Bjork and PJ Harvey): "We have tits. We have three holes. That's what we have in commeon."

"Im the queen of the nerds."

(on why she sings the tragic Me and a Gun): "as a way of healing the place inside myself that has been hurt, enraged, and numbed by violence."

(of touring): "I live for it. It's my life's blood."



(on her pianos, the Boseys): "The one that i own is very much a recording instrument, she's not into touring. She's eight years old now. She was in a church in New York City for a while where she got battered and abused, and she got showed around to every club in the city before she was in the church, so she just got the shit beat out of her in New York, and I felt like she and I really understood each other, so, she had to be rebuilt kind of, and I just take really good care of her. She gathers her energy and then we put her on the record. The piano in touring with is a year old, so she's feisty and wants to see the worls and check out boys multiculturally. She was rotting in this showroom in London. So she's happy to be on the road with me, meeting all these cute dudes."

(Robert Plant on Tori not wanting to have bootlegs of her music out): "You ain't nothing until your bootlegged."



(reportedly at a show that she heard folks from her old school were in attendance): "Hey! The folks from the Peabody are here. That's cool. They've got a new motto around Peabody these days: 'if we kick you out, you can make it.' "

"I happen to adore red lipstick.It just gets on everything, so i usually only wear it when i do laundry bare-assed."

"I am inspired constantly by the kids that come to the shows. They give me new vision just by showing their true selves. If i can inspire them to be their own saviors, then I've done a good thing."

(after UTP, before writing BFP): "I'm starting to write again. I dont know what my next work's going to be, but I think that there's gonna be a lot of bloodletting on it."

"If somebody needs to collect a million pictures of me, well, then that's what they need to do. I mean, some people have baseball cards." Tori Adored -Entertainment Weekly, July 12, 1996

"I love fascinating men. But I am very much a one man woman. I am monogamous. I always have been. When I think about getting ready to cheat I know it's over." Tea and Sympathy for the Goddess B-Side, May/June, 1996

"I am always drawn geographically to a place while I am writing." Tea and Sympathy for the Goddess B-Side, May/June, 1996

"It doesn't matter where I am as long as there is a fat Italian cook near by."

"People can travel great distances on a computer, so why can't we travel that way emotionally?"

"I've been a musician before I was a human."

"Poppa [Tori's part-Cherokee grandfather] always said the South was so confusing because the it smells the sweetest after a lynching. That's because after a lynching the goddess cries and the honeysuckle never smelled sweeter."

"It's not a revenge record (Boys for Pele) but a releasing record. I've been angry at myself, too, for getting into certain situations with men. Anger is healthy, but out of balance if it doesn't have compassion."

"Let go and love, "F*ck that sh*t! My heart is scarred. I have a tear running down the middle of it and I'm not ready to say, 'Let go and love.'" (A thought on Blood Roses)

"I think my mom would like to tag along and have a dance with him (Lucifer) because she's been a minister's wife for so long!"

"Even if you don't read history or you aren't interested in anything that happened before the '60s, there are reasons why we think the way we do. There are reasons why people are going crazy right now."

"If you look at rock culture, there is very much a desire for the sacred bridegroom to die. The sacred brides don't die much. Janis Joplin is one of the very few."

"Eric and I were inseparable, and the truth is I don't care any less for him. We just agreed that we needed to go and be independent of each other."

"You don't have to justify everything. Being pissed off is just absolutely okay."

"Men have periods too, they just don't bleed..."

"I'm not sane."

"I've listened to Ice-T quite a bit. He has a very clear opinion of women, and I don't necessarily agree with that, but L7 have a very clear opinion of men. Certain things do appeal to me more than other things."

"I can't be a boy with extra holes, right? Well, I guess if you cut my hands off, I couldn't play the piano anymore, but I'd still be a woman."

"Oh, I laugh my head off when some woman calls me a shivering waif in the forest. I'm like OK, sister, you get raped and get ready to get cut up, and then write about it and sing it. And you have the balls to call me a waif shivering in the forest. That to me is a lizard running around with a pussy. It's not a woman to me. She ruined her rights as a woman."

"I don't know about politics, but I know about thinking for yourself. A lot of people stand in different camps right now. One of the camps is, We are fucked, and we have no choice. We're fucked. I don't agree with that. I think we're choosing to be fucked, which is different. This ain't Rwanda. Helloooooo. Let's not have delusions of grandeur here. Know what I'm saying?"

"There is a level of the vampire in me, which is OK."

"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."

"It hurts me when a woman doesn't come through for me, more than a man.

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

"The whole Christian theology is that god came down to experience life through his son. Well, how's he experiencing life if he doesn't get laid? Give me a break. And why would he not get laid, as he created the apparatus in the first place? Of course he soiled his little dinky."



"Where I come from, a cockroach is a roach, and a cockerel is a rooster because they can't bring themselves to say cock. Some of my lyrics upset my father."

"What is an angel but a ghost in drag?"

"I find it (the truth) especially when I'm in an altered state. Music can put me in an altered state." Talks of the Devil --Dazed and Confused Mag (UK)

"Britain is the one country that doesn't seem as affected by Christianity, which is really funny because they spread it all over the fucking planet and destroyed all these cultures." Talks of the Devil --Dazed and Confused Mag (UK)

"The problem with my Christian upbringing was the role models for women. The idea passed down to you was that you couldn't be a passionate woman--not a virgin, but a woman--and still claim experience and wisdom. Sexuality hasn't become part of the divine mother. The Magdalene is not part of the female role model of the Christian church, and that's a huge part of what I claim."

"I've been taking tea with Lucifer. I mean I've truly spent time with Lucifer, the energy of Lucifer. So when I sing, 'Father Lucifer, you never looked so sane', I truly went to those places. I'm talking about the shadow side, the secrets of the unconscious. It's about claiming in ourselves what we hate in other people."

"Until I started bringing in my sin, my judgment of other people was so harsh." Talks of the Devil --Dazed and Confused Mag (UK)

"Feminism is limited. Listen, I can drag a man's balls across the country better than a man can. I run my own publishing company. I run my own label. I was the youngest student ever at the Peabody Conservatory. I was a musician first. I held my own with the bad boys that can play their asses off. I wasn't just the girl singer. But I don't want to have to play it better than a man. That's what makes me puke. I just want to play it like it is." Talks of the Devil -Dazed and Confused Mag (UK)

"It's like you don't think about how you drink water, you just do. It was the same way with music. I had been playing piano ever since I was in diapers. It wasn't an analytical thing." --Chicago Tribune, January, 1996

"In my relationships with men, I was always musician enough, but not woman enough. I always met men in my life as a musician, and there would be magic, adoration. But then it would wear off. All of us want to be adored, even for five minutes a day, and nothing these men gave me was ever enough." --Chicago Tribune, January, 1996

"You can't have grace without the whores." --Chicago Tribune, January, 1996

"DIVERSITY CREATES WHOLENESS"
(thanks to toriphile meryl lammers for submitting this quote to me:)

"When musicians challenge themselves, they therefore challenge their audience, and therfore the whole market gets challenged. When you do that, you have a lot of challenging music out there. Then the medium rises to another level."

"Musically, I always allow myself to jump off cliffs...that's what it feels like to me."--Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1996

"I gave up trying to please others and started playing for myself, and because I love music, things naturally happened then. Funny how that works."--Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1996

"I'm into circuses, but there can be chaos with incredible direction."-Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1992

"If you're going to do a cover, it has to be a complete challenge.--Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1992

"Being a minister's daughter, I had theology for breakfast, lunch and dinner."--The Orland Sentinel, February 11, 1994

"When you stop putting yourself on the line, and you don't touch your own heart, how do you expect to touch other people?"--Sun-Sentinel, Palm Springs, November 1, 1996

"The biggest myth about fame is that it's gonna take away the pain."--Q Magazine, March 1996

"When I play live, I walk in feeling that we could go anywhere, reach any star system. Once I'm out there it's almost like I'm in a trance. I can get very physical too."--People, February 5, 1996

"When I don't have to answer to anybody, I feel I'm more ruthless."--Billboard Magazine, January 13, 1996

"I mean, I could not put one more fishin' line in one more boy's pond."--Details, March 1996

I don't hate men. I give equal time in my hate. It's acts of people that I hate. Whether they be men or women, it's their behavior that I hate."--Really Deep Thoughts Fanzine, Winter 1993

"The songs kind of stalk me, and when I just throw a line on them to try and get them out of my life they become pretty vicious. They come in. They move in, and they insist. Because they won't accept me lessening them, just because I'm uncomfortable."--Images & Insights

"...I would find myself either the lovey-doveyest-woviest sweet pea, or a mad-woman."--Spin, March 1996

"My strength isn't as a technician. My strength is as a composer."--PrimeTime Live

"My commitment is to cross over that river, the river of victimhood."--PrimeTime Live

"I think it's good that I played clubs for so long because it makes you appreciate when people are pouring their martinis all over your piano."--VH1 Crossroads

"I was very influenced by these wonderful gay men who gave me the confidence to dress up, and taught me how to put on make-up, and gave me the courage on how to kiss a boy...They taught me how to become a young woman. They taught me about tenderness."--PrimeTime Live



"Whatever we do as consenting adults, there has to be a level of the heart."--Lifetime's "The Dish"

"There's the inner world which is a reflection of the outer world, and when you think of all the billions of worlds that are going on out there -- we are connected with that, we're not encouraged to think of our connection as why we are on this planet. Is our life just functional; is that all that is? Getting up, going to work, having kids, to just populate the planet? I mean there have to be reasons we do things..."--Tori Amos In Conversation Interview CD

"My songs have always been reflective of what is going on in my life at a particular time."--Tori biography at www.tori.com

"I believe in eating. I think women especially have this fear of eating, and I think there is a whole euphoric plane you can rise to when you have a good meal. You sit down and with every bite you honestly just say thank you."

"I'm writing the whole record in the tropics. It's great to watch the lizards and drink margaritas while you're writing. The humidity influences the whole rhythm of the songs - your hip sways differently and my left hand is not the same as it was before. It's so humid, as soon as you take a shower you regret it. I love the heat, although it's absolutely necessary to ship in a lot of French perfume." --Tori Amos (on writing her new album) --Q magazine - June, 1997

"It's like I'm saying to the muse, 'Look, if you don't want my input, go to Jewel.'"--Rolling Stone

"People are hardest on themselves. Vicious. Mad. To feel compassion for others, you have to feel compassion for yourself--somehow. Read, become self-aware, honor your body, be committed to tending your soul. Pick up books that inspire you. One of my favorites, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche by Robert Johnson."

"These songs (Boys For Pele) are not about make-ups or break-ups. And they're not concerned about who is sleeping with whom. They're about the realization that you and the person you're with are talking different languages. They're about recognizing that an extreme kind of viciousness is being played out even as you exchange honeysuckle. They're about the things that go on in a woman's heart -- the things that are expressed and the things that have to remain hidden. They're about the breaking down of the patriarchy within relationships and the idea of women claiming their own power."

"Women have had to find ways to practice their art - by banging on the door. A lot of times you don't get in the door because you're banging too loudly. You have to find the crack in the wall. Then, instead of banging, somehow you melt yourself like honey and butter, and just run through to the other side."--Rolling Stone, 30th Anniversary Issue



"Seven years I would turn in tapes to record companies; after seven years of rejection of my own music, I believed them when they said, 'This girl-at-her-piano thing is never gonna happen...get a band, do metal, do dance, do whatever'--and I did them all. I had my limit of how much rejection I could take. I didn't believe in myself enough." (on her pre-Little Earthquake days) --LA Times, Jan 30, 1994

"The Peabody never taught me anything about women composers. There have been women composers for hundreds of years. Mozart's sister was quite an accomplished pianist, but her career was put aside. That's just the way it was."--Rolling Stone, Nov 13, 1997

"When 'Y Kant Tori Read' bombed, I didn't have any respect for myself."--LA Times, Jan 30, 1994

"You have to be patient with it (the harpsichord)...which i never was in my relationships."

"I don't write when I've used too much of any kind of substance. You have to be quite conscious to go into your unconscious. Every song is the Holy Grail for me."--Rolling Stone, Nov 13, 1997

"If you really want a challenge, just deal with yourself."--B-sides, Apr/May 94

"When all young people would start listening to their own voice instead of saying what adults say or whatever MTV dicatates, this would be a whole different planet."

"The music really comes from the ethers. It's not an intellectual process. You don't fuck to a metronome."--Rolling Stone, Oct 13, 97

"I don't feel guilty when I'm at the piano."--National Public Radio Interview

"You can't change what happened. And nobody's asking you to forgive. But you can't associate all men with violence."--National Public Radio

"Why be afraid of these cuddly, soft, adorable things? For a minute, I thought they were communicating with me." (Tori on the rats in her "God" video)--National Public Radio

"I would sit and tell Bartok secrets. I would play him some John Lennon, and then I'd play something that I wrote and go, 'So this is what I wanted to tell you,' and then I'd play some of his music and feel like he was telling me something."--L.A. Times, Jan 30, 1994

"I couldn't become the concert pianist the teachers and parents wanted me to become," she says. "I couldn't sit playing somebody else's music for 12 hours and be told that my interpretation was wrong and be OK with it. How do you know how Debussy would feel about my interpretation of his music?"--LA Times, Jan 30, 1994

"My concept of the great spirit is not the controlling force that is in institutional religion. When I say God, I'm talking about judgments over thousands of years that are horrific - love your neighbor but do what we say or we'll rape your women."--National Public Radio

"I have good days. Like if I get really good coffee ice cream with just the right amount of chocolate syrup."

The term [feminist] has been linked selfishly with women's rights. If men and children are dishonored, we are dishonored too. Feminine energy, the principle of fertility and nurturing, is absent in our culture, but matriarchy isn't the answer, either. It's about balance."--National Public Radio

"If I hadn't become a rock chick, I would be dead today, so long live hair spray."--LA Times, Jan 30, 1994

"I wanted to take leaps as a musician and a composer, but the woman in me had to catch up. The woman wanted to play it safe."

"I like butter and the people who like butter." -Dew Drop In Tour, June 12, 1996

"There is room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you're your own person."

"The way I play is a bit tortuous, but, at the same time, it's the only way I know how to play. It would be hard for me to hit those notes with that power and play with accuracy unless I supported myself physically the way I do."

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