Tori Quote Of The Day





"My mother would talk about Jackie in tears saying, '...when J.F.K. was shot, the country was just torn to pieces because it was like, we are not safe, this woman, with her faith and deep love somewhere in herself, held the nation together.'"

"I don't believe in the saying that it all happens for the best...it's just not appropriate."

"On bad days I talk to Death constantly, not about suicide because honestly that's not dramatic enough. "

"Once you were a part of the imagery, once you let yourself become a part of it, then you begin to see what was happening. Sort of like when your walking into someone else's mushroom trip."

"Do any of you dream about crocodiles? Well, this is the thing. I dream about crocodiles, girls, all the time. And its the strangest thing. Because, you know, it's not a pretty thing I dream about. So if any of you interpret dreams you can write it down and tell me what you think because I really don't know, I don't know anything about dreams. But I dream this crocodile is eating my carrot! Now this could be a problem about a bad hair dye day, I'm not quite sure what it means. But I know I dream about crocodiles. I'm obsessed with them. I love them, so if you have any thoughts write me a note. But other than that that's all I'm thinking about right now."

". . .anger originates from envy and outrage: not being seen; not being heard. 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. No, they felt ignored, rejected, humiliated, and wanted revenge."

"There exists such a thing as boasting about misery. One sentence in 'Cruel' deals with that: 'Dance with the Sufis celebrate your top ten in the charts of pain'. When I had a miscarriage, there were people who said: 'Yes, but you only lost an unborn child. Our son was murdered!' For some people things aren't bad enough as it is. And some hang on to the fact that The Most Terrible Thing happened to them: they entered at #1 in the charts of pain. And then others are secretly jealous because they're only at #6."

"You know that saying, 'Bad things don't happen to good people'? That's a painful lie, and it hits you on such a core level."

"We don't know where souls go when they die. We don't know a lot of things. We didn't create the planets. We didn't do this all by ourselves. So, therefore, why wouldn't there be a creative force if it can create humans and planets?"

"I had almost made like a secret pact with the piano when I made "Little Earthquakes", and with each record I was finding different ways to work with the piano. Till finally on this record (Choirgirl), it was integrating it with other instruments. On the other records, I would record the piano vocal by itself, and all the instruments would be put around it. On this album, the piano vocal was recorded live with the drummer. So that they're having a conversation with each other. And I really felt like I was ready for the piano to be more rhythmic than it was."

"Some of the countries, it's not about hitting them over the head. They're looking for hidden meanings, and that's why I am such a big fan of Faulkner. He weaves a tale, and sucks you in, and there is beauty, and many things, then harshness comes when it comes. He uses the cold bucket of water to get you to understand what is going on. Things are very much a soft focus lens that you are watching horror through, and that's why you aren't reacting, because you are numb."

"The audiences in Italy, when I play live they are some of the most interesting audiences that I play to. They really seem to understand the emotions; whether they understand the words, they understand the emotion. I think a lot of that is due to their opera. They are brought up with it, the breath, the tone, the phrasing... what's behind the vocal..."

"After my miscarriage, I was in shock. I had been in Mommy mode for three months, I thought I was "out of the woods" with the pregnancy, before it was all taken away. I started asking questions at the time about whether I was paying a debt to someone for this. People would say, 'It's God's will,' or 'Things like this happen for a reason.' Then I started wondering, 'Where do souls go when they leave the planet?' I'd chase down any deity to get some answers. It was at that time when I was asking all those questions that the songs just started to arrive on my doorstep."

"Because of my experiences--the ones that make up me--I'll use different symbolism to make the songs distinctly my own. After that, the rewriting and editing are constant. Jackie's Strength and Hotel came to me as siamese twins. The chorus of Jackie was really the chorus of Hotel so I had to pull them apart. Hotel actually came with three choruses (as hotels do). It took a whileto realize that Jackie was a different girl."

"Well the Bose...she's just in another league than the other ones."

"Obviously, if you use the English language right, you can pack a good punch. You can get people to see something in a way they didn't want to--or weren't willing to. I see myself as a librarian in high heels, and I'm becoming more comfortable with that. The man I'm with has really made me want to discover more about my womanhood."

"We're all intrinsically capable of being nice or nasty--it's a choice. Volunteer if you can. Give money to a person on the street-but only if it feels right. Carpool. Remember, doing good is never futile, even if it feels as if you're only applying a Band-Aid. One person can make a difference. "

"It's very important that people feel respected, because I don't get off on anything else-that's what I get off on. I believe in the round table- I do. Not the way it's been commercialized and the tale has been told, but I do believe in a concept of a round table."

"All you have on your plate is your reality. You decide whether you look at your reality or live pretending these feelings don't exist."

"I've been hanging out with some of the Hell's Angels in England. They're some of the sweetest people I've ever met."

"I think I'm honest on all the records. I think that Little Earthquakes made such an impression because it was the first time you heard that from me -- it's like a virgin experience."

"I went through a lot of different feelings after the miscarriage - you go through everything possible. You question what is fair, you get angry with the spirit for not wanting to come, you keep asking why."

"Well the Bose...she's just in another league than the other ones. She's hand-made, and we got her MIDIed up so I can play with a band without all the feedback and stuff. If you played her, you would understand. Just in the action, the way she talks back to you as an instrument. She talks back in a different way."

"Real friends have to be understanding of eachother, and their faults."

"My male worth was quite good. Chemically I'm not interested in women in that way. The smell of men seems to make me want to merge physically, but again I've always had a real problem embracing the feminine."

"I have a real good shrink, and we started beading a necklace, you know...a little bead here, a little bead there. A memory, a moment and then one day something shifted."

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

"At the age of 3, I was playing the piano, at 4, I was composing and at 5 I decided I would be a rock star."

"I don't hang out with many celebs on a regular basis. I'm a very close circle. I think I'm really hard to get to know on a personal level."

"The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). It's the only 24-hour rape hotline in America. I helped to set it up after a girl came backstage on the 1994 Under The Pink tour sobbing hysterically and obviously in pain. We were about to leave when she said, 'Please let me come with you. My stepfather raped me last night and he'll do the same tonight.' She was only 14. I wanted to take her with us but lawyers were straight on the phone, saying I'd be arrested for kidnapping if we crossed the state line. All I could do was give her a hug, a blanket and some spaghetti."

"I seem to be comfortable with slugs. And thirty crewmen that I feed and take care of. Like all good pets they poop in the corners."

"Thailand is calling me. I had a long lay over in the Bangkok airport and I was drawn to get out of the city and get deeper into the country. I'm actually going there before I make the next work."

"People I see laughing all the time, check for razor blades in their anal-force underwear, because it's just a little lie."

"We put men under pressure too much by expecting them to make us happy. I want to get happy by my inner energy."

"I think it's so obvious when a guitar player can only play a few chords and a couple of riffs, whereas the keyboard player can have all this gear and all these sounds are coming out and it can be very distracting, and yet you realize all they can do is I-IV-V-I, man."

"The strength it takes to get up and sing that song every night is more than I ever imagined."
-Tori Amos on her song "Me and a Gun"

"It's tricky to sneak in an all-access code to somebody else's psyche, you have to knock first. With yourself, even though I think nobody has complete access to their own psyche, well, you do have the right to plunder yourself. So I'm in a lot of my material. But I might not necessarily be the character you think I am. I let you think I'm the good guy just because people like to think of me as the good guy, though sometimes I'm the villain."

"I'm not interested in taking drugs. I do hallucinogens once in a while for journey experiences."

"I hear the wine. It's like a structure. I see it as a piece. I hear it before I taste it. It's calling me. And then I start to hear it when I'm tasting it. Not that I use crystal suppositories....I'm not New Age."

"Somebody said that Howard Stern said sarcastically that I was a 'real party', but you know, rape isn't about a party. If something like that happened to somebody he loved, he better hope I'm not about a party when that moment happens and they need help. I'm really doing this so that people can go to a party."

"I was brought up with the belief that if you did X, Y and Z - if you prayed and went to church and didn't do certain things - that God would listen to your prayers. And the real truth is that the wolf will show up at your door sometime in your life no matter how compassionate you are or how loving you are."

"Many scholars believe that Mary Magdalene was a high priestess who came from the cult of Isis. She wasn't this 'anything for a fiver, honey.' She was a peer to Jesus."

"I think the institutions teach you what to think, not how to think, and I'm a big believer in a person having a choice in how they express their belief."

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Thanks el_perry@acad.fandm.edu for most of the quotes.