Tori Amos Quotes

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

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

I'm too wacky for most weirdos. Who am I to judge?

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

If you really want a challenge, just deal with yourself.

If they keep crashing stuff into the moon, the moon's gonna get pissed off, and the tides'll change, and all the women'll start PMS-ing together. Then you guys are going to fucking regret it.

I don't see myself as weird, I just see myself as honest.

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

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don`t fit into boxes.

The truth lies in between the 1st and the 40th drink

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.

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

Sometimes I breathe you in and I know you know.

Get off the cross, we need the wood.

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

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

I think that people who can't believe in fairies aren't worth knowing.

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

The sense of loss is such a tricky one, because we always feel like our worth is tied up into stuff that we have, not that our worth can grow with things we are willing to lose.

When you've got the virgin and the whore sitting next to each other, they're likely to judge each other harshly.

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.

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

Is there room in my heart for you to follow your heart?

Never was a cornflake girl; Thought it was a good solution: hanging with the raisin girls.

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

So then I though I'd make some plans, but Fire thought she'd really rather be Water instead...

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

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.

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.

From in the shadow she calls. And in the shadow she finds a way, finds a way. And in the shadow she crawls, clutching her faded photograph. My image under her thumb. Yes with a message for my heart. She’s been everybody else’s girl maybe one day she’ll be her own.

God sometimes you just don't come through, Do you need a woman to look after you?

On bad days I talk to Death constantly, not about suicide because honestly that's not dramatic enough. Most of us love the stage and suicide is definitely your last performance and being addicted to the stage, suicide was never an option - plus people get to look you over and stare at your fatty bits and you can't cross your legs to give that flattering thigh angle and that's depressing. So we talk. She says things no one else seems to come up with, like let's have a hotdog and then it's like nothing's impossible. She told me once there is a part of her in everyone, though Neil believes I'm more Delirium than Tori, and Death taught me to accept that, you know, wear your butterflies with pride. And when I do accept that, I know Death is somewhere inside of me. She was the kind of girl all the girls wanted to be, I believe, because of her acceptance of "what is." She keeps reminding me there is change in the "what is" but change cannot be made till you accept the "what is.

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

I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul. Dive deep into your soul and explore it. I don’t want to renounce my dark side. The truth has always held an enormous interest for me.

Strange, i thought i knew you well, thought i had read the sky, thought i had seen a change in your eyes.

Healing for me is being able to sit next to the butcher and say 'Yes, I’m sitting next to the butcher now,' instead of saying 'there is no butcher'.

Give me life Give me pain Give me myself again.

I believe in peace, Bitch.

He said, first let's just unzip your religion down.

...Her entire life has been devoted to healing the deepest, most invasive unseeable scar that one can ever have.

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don't fit into boxes.

I'm the queen of the nerds.

and if there is a way to find you, I will find you. but will you find me if Neil makes me a tree

What I want is not to want what isn't mine

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

I salute to you Commander and I sneeze 'Cause I have Now an Allergy To your policies it seems Where have we gone wrong America? Mr. Lincoln we can't seem to find you anywhere out of the millions From the deserts To the mountains Over prairies To the shores Is this just the Madness of King George Yo George Is this just the Madness of King George Yo George Well you have the whole Nation on all fours.

Gimme peace, love, and a hard cock!

She told me once there is a part of her in everyone, though Neil believes I'm more Delirium than Tori, and Death taught me to accept that, you know, wear your butterflies with pride.

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

I'm an acquired taste. I'm anchovies. If I was potato chips I could go more places.

The Apocalypse is not something out there that will eradicate everything on planet Earth. That would be far too simple. The Apocalypse is in each and every one of us. It takes courage to fight the beast.

If all I can say is I'm not in this swamp, I'm not in this swamp then there is not a rope in front of me and there is not an alligator behind me and there is not a girl sitting at the edge eating a hot dog and if I believe that, then dying would be the only answer because then Death couldn't come and say Peachy to me anymore and after all she has a brother who believes in hope.

This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It's no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don't throw away your cotton zippy jacket.

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.

But I needed to access the Dark Prince in myself, instead of pulling in men who had access to it.

she said, these dead petals, honey, brought me here

There are times when I have had to make peace with the fact that I am at war.

I must become my own owner, my own authority. I must be a home to myself, and I must find a way to live what I believe.

And is it right butterfly? They like you better framed and dried.

Every artist is born in a place, within a family, and though she may leave those sources far behind, they remain within her.

Threads that are golden don't break easily.

Even a glamorous bitch can be in need.

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.

You want listeners to smell the lavender, to feel the point of those knitting needles in a handbag of the granny who happens to harbor a loyalty to Madame Defarge. You want the listener to know the wood's burning in the stove when they walk into the song with me. Music is about all of your senses, not just hearing.

Got a kick for a dog Beggin' for Love I gotta have my suffering So that I can have my cross I know a cat named Easter He says will you ever learn You're just an empty cage girl If you kill the bird I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets I've been raising up my hands Drive another nail in Got enough guilt to start my own religion

From the ancient Inanna forcing herself to the underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal— passing through the seven gates of the underworld and then being hung on a hook, rotting— where she had to look at her sister, and her sister had to look at her. Both needed to see inside themselves, to see inside their own shadows. To come to terms with who they really were, not who they thought they were.

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

In the Springtime of his voodoo, he was going to show me spring.

Decades later, in a magazine I bought from a garage sale as a teenager, Tori Amos said she would've given her arm to have written "A Case of You." I'm always struck by this notion. Any writer who's ever been warned off a man wishes they'd written "A Case of You." But what inspires this particular compliment, this feeling of not just loving a song, or any work of art, but longing to have created it yourself? It happens when you identify so intensely with the work it feels wrong somehow - sad, almost- that is didn't come from your own brain. Like if you had arrived at this expression yourself, you would have more effectively metastasized the emotions that made you love the song so much.

Tori is the woman in your neighborhood who stops by your garden, pauses, and gets you going for three hours on the topic of lilies that grow best in winter sun. Later, you'll walk by her pea patch and discover the most spectacular flower, not exactly what you planted, but something that shows the influence of the tips you shared.

The man with the black-and-white-striped eyes shivered, and began hunting for a door, but none of the guests had remembered to bring a door with them.

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

I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it.

I know now that my avatar all along has been closer to Lisa Simpson than anyone else.

Containment of your opinion is a must if you are going to nurture an artist's development

But over the years you can cultivate hate for the art you love.

Neil says "Hi" by the way...

Listen—when you're on the toilet, from the point of view of the toilet, you are not an icon taking a crap. You are a bottom taking a crap. If you can get that, you're going to be okay.

Again, we go back to the power of words and how they can make you feel. They bring liberation or stagnation, they're chains. I began to see the structure of Tori—there's conservatory, and victory: you see that word in so many different other words—also anti-inflammatory but my favorite has to be Yakatori chicken. And I began to feel that the sound of this name was a window.

For years I've gathered various books, sources. When I was little it might have been Tolkien, and so I would have just four books around me. I couldn't afford many books at the time, so I'd have what I had. Maybe I'd tear out ten or twenty pictures from magazines because I couldn't afford art books. I would check out library books and try to keep them as long as I could, but I couldn't jot my notes in them. For any particular song, I can't tell you the books that were on the floor, the photographs on the floor. I don't let anybody keep a record of that. Those are the secret ingredients.

Once she said to me, "One day, young lady, you will give your body and obedience to your husband your soul to God." And I whipped around and said, "And what, pray tell, Grandma, are you saying is left for me?

Every finger in the room Is pointing at me I wanna spit in their faces Then I get afraid of what that could bring I got a bowling ball in my stomach I got a desert in my mouth Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets Looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets I've been raising up my hands Drive another nail in Just what God needs One more victim

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”_____

What I wished another songwriter would have told me years and years ago is that your circumstances make up your story, and no one has exactly your story. It is your very own. You need never envy someone else’s life story. Not as a songwriter.

Cindy came up with a glass world with a lone woman—Tori— having to navigate with bare feet. Karen came up with the idea of white. I dug it because if the woman missteps, then there is nowhere to hide all that blood on such a pretty white dress. I found that expression more in the vein of Artemis, if you're looking for an archetype. Artemis— the lone huntress, who finds other women to help her achieve what must be achieved as she tries to protect those creatures that she cares for.

As a songwriter, I'm gathering clues and possibilities all the time, whether I see a piano that day or not. I've tried to explain to people how I collect these dispatches, because I think anybody can do what I'm talking about. Once I do plug in, I might get only one line and two bar phrases of the melody. I always have elements of songs around that may never ever get recorded. As far back as Little Earthquakes, I began to realize that I needed to have a library of notes, phrases, words, things that might prove useful at any given time. Within a few months' time I'll gather hundreds of those fragments. Half won't be used. And then the craft comes in, the part that is about painting a world. You want listeners to smell the lavender, to feel the point of those knitting needles in a handbag of the granny who happens to harbor a loyalty to Madame Defarge. You want the listener to know the wood's burning in the stove when they walk into the song with me. Music is about all of your senses, not just hearing.

Look I'm standing naked before you Don't you want more then my sex I can scream as loud as your last one But I can't claim innocence Oh God Could it be the weather Oh God Why am I here If love Isn't forever And it's not the weather Hand me my leather I could just pretend that you love me The night would lose all sense of fear But why do I need you to love me When you can't Hold what I hold dear Oh God Could it be the weather Oh God Why am I here If love Isn't forever And it's not the weather Hand me my leather I almost ran over an angel He had a nice big fat cigar "In a sense" he said "You're alone here So if you jump you best jump far" Oh God Could it be the weather Oh God Why am I here If love Isn't forever And it's not the weather Hand me my leather

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.

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. I think our generation loves our pain, and if you dare take it away from us, we’re going to kill you. We like our pain. And we’re packaging it, and we’re selling it.

There have been many other performers brought up by very religious parents, and then when they are able to own this essence and put it into their music, the sensual-sexual thing that they were not allowed to acknowledge and partake of in real life actually materializes in the music. If anybody knew you were consciously partaking of this sensual-sexual thing, you'd be ostracized. You would be thought of as sinful. Elvis went through something like this, if you think about it. Trace the roots of American popular culture, and the story is there.

Certain relationships can just wear you down. So you mirror or reflect back- kind of like a pet, reflecting back what its master wants. This can seem easier in the moment: Whatever it takes to back this person's vibe down. The master does not have to be male. Sometimes he is, but not always. Whoever the master is, they know this, that people can be trained. Either with praise, shame, the fear of failure, or the fear of being gaslighted, the technique is a relationship of rewards and punishments. There is no unconditional love here. No, this kind of relationship is all about the master's conditions. Not joint respectful mutual conditions, but their conditions.

I don't think that many performers necessarily want to see their audience empowered. I think a lot of performers, no different from priests, need the hierarchy. Modern, celebrity-driven entertainment turns the stage into an altar, and so many celebrities refuse to be removed from those altars once they manage to ascend. They will not be taken down— the Goddess is offended … As a storyteller in the old tradition, you held an important place at the circle. Your position was fluid, not necessarily permanent, but it demanded that you respected the others witnessing your performance as much as they respected you. All storytellers, all troubadours worth their salt knew their myths.

Then, as we ascend into the fifth and final act of the show, we can choose what we want to take back with us: a piece of our underworld self that, frankly, the cheating boyfriend may need to meet, or the boss that doesn't appreciate you, or the terrorizing Bitch at school—or maybe you're the terrorizing Bitch, maybe I am. Some fragments that took their masks off while we were on this underworld journey sometimes walk quietly with me. Only I know that after the show they will be staying with me as my figurative New Renter in my seafront condo, down the street from Pituitary Lane, behind Heart Terrace. Then again, some unmasked Beings that I see during a performance find me once I'm back in my dressing room and receive from me the “Okay you, thank you for the perspective and the vision, but in this century you can't just chop people's heads off and feed them to your cats, and I know these guys are bad guys, and thank you for the vision. So you can haunt me during the show again in Indy

That many southerners in our modern-day society, as rockets were beginning to go up to the moon, were still not over this particular wounding shows in some way the extent of this physical and spiritual bloodbath.

The inspiration for "Cornflake Girl" came from a conversation she was having with a longtime friend about female genital mutilation in Africa, specifically how a close female family member would betray the victim by performing the procedure. Tori has said that growing up, the name they gave to girls who would hurt you despite close friendship was cornflake girls

Most people would rather be sheep than stand on their own with antlers on. - Tori Amos

This is not your standard rock star's I-was-born-a-poor-genius self-deification, nor is it the opposite,

The songs don't spring whole into existence; they are built.

This Love” by Craig Armstrong “Everybody Hurts” by Jasmine Thompson “Till The End of Time” by A Boy and His Kite “Condemnation” by Depeche Mode “Unsteady” by X Ambassadors “Silent All These Years” by Tori Amos “Paralyzed” by NF “Sane” by Fear of Men “No Light, No Light” by

Sometimes I don't feel I've translated them correctly. I listen to other songwriters and think they have translated their Sonic Light Being more concisely, so I study them and try to gain the tools to become a better interpreter of light into sound. Because this lives in a dimension where there are no real estate agents of light—at least not yet, thank God— I know it seems intangible to some people. But the sonic world can be visited. I started visiting this world when I was three, listening to a piece by Béla Bartók; I visited a configuration that day that wasn't on this earth. My toes were curled up in worn Methodist carpet, and I knew I wanted to take more journeys like this. It was euphoric. It is euphoric.