Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
...words are some of the most powerful and important things I know....Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger--and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.
Well, it's really gratifying to me to have a stage and some bright lights and a microphone. They're tools and opportunities, and to be able to just pull somebody up on stage with me and point at them is a great feeling.
Second Wave feminism started with consciousness-raising groups, which sounds "big" but it's really just house parties. Women getting together and saying, "You feel this way?! Me too!" Hanging out is consciousness-raising.
Life is a B Movie: it's stupid and it's strange, it's a directionless story, the dialogue is lame, but in the 'he said she said' sometimes there's some poetry, if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally.
I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.
You rhapsodize about beauty, and my eyes glaze. Everything that I love is ugly. I mean really, you would be amazed. Just do me a favor, it's the least that you can do, just don't treat me like I am something that happened to you.
I knew naturally as a child not to forfeit my creativity to a world that's all laid out for me. I'll look at everything around me and vow to keep in mind that alla this is just someone's idea. It could have just as well been mine.
My distraction's my defense against this lack of inspiration Against this slow deflation Yeah the further the horizon The more it holds my gaze The foreground's out of focus but you know I kinda hope it's just a phase Just a phase.
I think the gay community should get smart and drop the word marriage. Do you really need to change every right-wing Christian to make sure you get your equal rights? Eyes on the prize, we should be sticking to getting equal rights.
I think the gay community should get smart and drop the word 'marriage.' Do you really need to change every right-wing Christian to make sure you get your equal rights? Eyes on the prize, we should be sticking to getting equal rights.
We have a complete void of progressive politics in this country right now. The will of the people goes ignored and unrealized. I'm searching for the people that can enter the political system, a strong third party. We need to consolidate.
I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.
Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.
I did a lot of work with myself over the course of being pregnant and the first few months of being pregnant. It's nice, the pace of being pregnant; it gives you a long time to not just germinate a baby but germinate the mother that you're gonna be.
Like how could you do nothing, and say, 'I'm doing my best.' How could you take almost everything, and then come back for the rest? How could you beg me to stay, reach out your hands and plead, and then pack up your eyes and run away as soon as I agreed?
Being a parent has taught me a lot of things already, you know, though it's only been a year and half, and has made me address parts of myself that I would otherwise live in comfortable denial of, or you know and - you know, for instance, my self-loathing.
The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women can do... birthing naturally, as most women do around the globe, is a superhuman act. You leave behind the comforts of being human and plunge back into being an animal.
It can be very frustrating and very deflating to be constantly defined and described by other people, so I've stopped reading anything written about me, and I find it much healthier. I just sort of concentrate on what I do and don't worry too much about that.
One thing that Barack Obama promised, one thing that we all know we must do is evolve our industry and our technology to being green and sustainable. We need to move away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, both of which I think spell doom for human society.
You broke me bodily. The heart ain't the half of it, And I'll never learn to laugh at it In my good natured way. In fact, I'm laughing less in general, But I learned a lot at my own funeral. And I knew you'd be the death of me, So I guess that's the price I pay.
now the profile of our country looks a little less hard nosed / but that picket line persisted and that clinic's since been closed / they keep pounding their fists on reality hoping it will break / but I don't think there's a one of us leads a life free of mistakes
We get a little further from perfection, each year on the road, I guess that's what they call character, I guess that's just the way it goes, better to be dusty than polished, like some store window mannequin, why don't you touch me where i'm rusty, let me stain your hands
My political mission is as acute as ever. For me, in addition to kind of looking at the world and trying to engage in my society politically, having the kid around sort of makes me check in with myself. I think you're all busy trying to fix the world, but what about yourself?
One thing I do find in the "lost" generation or something is a kind of abhorrence of history, you know, like it's boring, dumb, or just not interesting. I think it's terribly interesting if you can get your head around how it relates to where you're standing right here and now.
I'm a little hibernating animal. Anonymity is one of my favorite things. I mean, that's why I moved to New York when I was like 18, because there, there are just so many people that there's no one and you're just lost. You're completely invisible and I find that very liberating.
I am not an angry girl, but it seems I've got everyone fooled. Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger and not to their own fear. Imagine you're a girl just trying to finally come clean, knowing full well they prefer you dirty and smiling.
I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.
When I was a teenager in the '80s, I was the only girl in the guitar shop. Now if you walk into a music store, it's mostly teenage girls. It's great! It's an expansion of possibilities for young women, finding a way to tools even if they aren't directly handed those tools by adults.
Before Katrina, you didn't see criticism of the Bush administration in the media. Here they are, stealing elections, enacting illegal wars, huge crimes against humanity and democracy, and you didn't even see criticism. It wasn't until Katrina that people started to come down on them.
Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'
What we all have to admit to is that one man cannot save us. Unless we start energizing ourselves, all standing behind him with all of the force of our collective power then we can't expect mountains to be moved. And that is not exactly happening, we are a very comfortable population.
What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to.
A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous 'girl power' sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it's a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.
All the decent people, male and female, are feminists. The only people who are not feminists are those who believe that women are inherently inferior or undeserving of the respect and opportunity afforded men. Either you are a feminist or you are a misogynist. There is no box marked "other."
My parents split up when I was young, and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way.
What I like way better than LGBT in terms of labeling sexuality actually is a scheme that comes to me from my friend Animal Prufrock wherein one is identified not by what they supposedly "are" but rather by what they are into. Which brings us to the terms hemosexual, shemosexual, and mosexual.
It don't take a weather man to look around and see the weather, Jeb said he'd deliver Florida folks and boy did he ever, and we hold these truths to be self evident number one George W Bush is not president. Number two America isn't a true democracy. And number three the media is not fooling me.
spring is super in the supermarkets and the strawberries prance and glow never mind that they're all kinda tart and tasteless as strawberries go meanwhile wild things are not for sale anymore than they are for show so i'll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty it takes more than eyes to know
and god help you if you are an ugly girl course too pretty is also your doom cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room and god help you if you are a pheonix and you dare to rise up from the ash a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying back
Squint your eyes and look closer I'm not between you and your ambition I am a poster girl with no poster I am thirty-two flavors and then some And I'm beyond your peripheral vision So you might want to turn your head Cause someday you might find you're starving and eating all of the words you said.
When I first started writing songs and being very explicit, it was hard, but one of the main things people respond to in my writing is that 'just say it' attitude of my songs. There really is nothing personal or private; it's all universal, if you can just find the courage to be open about your life.
My writing just kind of exists out there in the air-it's all sort of intended as spoken, or sung, word. So, to commit them to the page...that way was kind of intimidating to me, yet intriguing, to try to reflect the rhythms and connotations and emotions that you can deliver, speaking-wise, on a page.
I basically get stereotyped a lot in terms of being a girl and writing 'chick' music for teenage girls or something. I think, if anything, the press kind of, because of my gender and my age, tends to kind of relegate my work to this sort of special-interest group. It's part of the cultural dynamic, I guess.
These days, my main guitar amps have been Magnatone. They're beautiful. Magnatones have actual tremolo, which I recently learned about guitar amps. Often what guitar amps call vibrato is really just a volume Up and Down. But Magnatone has a true vibrato, which is pitch bending. And so, it's just a lush sound.
I sincerely believe patriarchy to be at the root of all of our social diseases and feminism, it's antidote, to be a prerequisite to peace on earth. feminism provides an alternative way of thinking and structuring things that focuses on and prioritizes relationships and de-emphasizes hierarchy, separation and domination.
I like to be an inspiration and an example of the idea that you can be independent, and it's no problem, and you can pay your rent, and it's empowering, and it's great. And that's true, but it also takes a really long time, and you have to have a lot of patience and a lot of conviction in why you want to remain independent.
I see a lot of young female performers who do not call themselves feminist, but would certainly believe in their own right to self-determination, and wouldn't want anybody to stop them from becoming themselves. They just refuse to recognize the relationship between their lives and those of other women, or feel any solidarity there.
It's the ground that we walk on, it's where we sit, it's the language that we use. It's a difficult undertaking, but I think without healing that and creating more of a balance between the sexes, we will never have balance globally. I feel like I am going deeper and deeper into this space where I came from that I barely understood.
I've never had a very closely connected family. My parents split up when I was young and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way.
I really have been enjoying performing more lately than I have in a long time and you know, it's all about that sort of centered feeling that I have now. You know, thanks to, not just my kid, but her father before her. You know, I have a kind of a grounding through them that I really relish, and I think is also good for my work, you know.