Quotes From Tori

Sometimes just because it's a true statement doesn't mean anybody cares.
So that's where the skill of storytelling comes in.

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

The ladies' room is a secret society, and when those lipsticks come out,
it's the heaviest artillery in the world - the guys have no idea what they're in for.

I started finding the people inside me...the prostitute that's really angry because I judge her
so harshly ...the self-righteous virgin who knows everything about sex and has never made love.

Most people would rather be sheep and have company than stand out with their own antlers on.

It would be sad if you had to go through a rape to hear what I was saying in
'Me and a Gun,' and to have compassion for that kind of violation.  The strength
it takes to get up and sing that song every night is more than I ever imagined.

I couldn't see that men's strength and physicality could be tender.  I had to pretend
I was a whore in my mind, thinking I was gonna get paid so I could be detached and stay in control.

I think you're always striving for wholeness.  I don't think you can put a time limit to it;
it's really always another fragment coming your way as long as you're alive until you leave the planet.

For all these years, I felt like all these different people at a dinner party.  When you've got the virgin and the whore sitting next to each other at dinner, they're likely to judge each other harshly.

You can compartmentalize different sides of yourself -
put them onto different shelves and then bring them out when you need them.

Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.

Once you get to know sad...she's got some sweet little dresses, you know?

The goal that my shrink had for me was that I could be intimate as a
woman again, eventually, and not be controlled by the way I was violated.

I don't have to try in the least to shock people.  My beliefs are sufficiently shocking to most people.  Because we live in a culture where passion and sexuality have been replaced by shame.  We are miles away from our hearts, our feelings.  In Greek mythology the gods were sleeping with the humans all the time.  But the christians claim Jesus was fathered without a single drop of sperm.  There wasn't even a penis involved.  It's a religion without penetration.  And subsequently the same believers take their swords and chop the non-believers to pieces, stab babies to death and burn witches at the stake.  And you think I'm shocking when I say I gave God a blowjob?  Give me a fucking break.

I was in love with this boy when I was five years old and I knew we could really make it
work.  I was trying to convince him and he took this hammer and hit me with it really hard.

People are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into the wound to discover what your fears are.  Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.

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

When I started watching my behavior and seeing how I would control people,
and how they would control me, it was awareness.  I want awareness more than
anything, and part of awareness is being able to honor the part of you that's Lady Macbeth.

So much happened to me in childhood and I still feel some kind of thread linking me with those days. I had times then when my spirit was broken. I remember when I was eleven and I thought my life was over.

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

I'm beginning to accept and love the parts of me, of women, that I
was trained to hate all my life.  Particularly the bad girl I can still be.

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.  Everything is therapeutic, no matter what you do.

I'm a winter girl.  I like coming out when things are desolate and everybody's ready to slit their wrists.

There are some really good things about the teachings of
Jesus, but Jesus had nothing to do with modern day Christianity.

I don't hate men.  I give them equal time in my hate.
It's the acts of people that I hate.  Whether they be men or women, it's their behavior that I hate.

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

I kind of feel I'm an archeologist when I'm making a record; I'm digging to discover
things.  I can't write something if I don't crawl in and sit behind your eyes and feel that.

Really I'm just translating.  Once I accepted that, that this isn't really about me,
it's just about tapping into different sides of woman, then I can take on these parts.

The meaning of life is bran in your diet.  I'm going to eat pasta now.

There are things I would disagree with Jesus about - and I feel really good about that.

Who wants some sniveling female all the time?
After all, just because something happened to me and was traumatic doesn't
make it interesting.  I've got to get my scissors out and make sure I'm telling
a story that works.  It may be your own experience, but you can't be too precious.

Others

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anais Nin

He who angers you conquers you.
-Elizabeth Kenny

Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
- Oliver Wendall Holmes

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
-Leo Rosten

The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.
-David Russell

As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven,
it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
-John Lancaster Spalding

The world needs anger.  The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.
-Bede Jarrett

Unfortunately, sometimes people don't hear you until you scream.
-Stefanie Powers

It's too dark a night to walk with your eyes closed.
-Sturn Brightblade

The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power.  You just take it.
-Roseanne Barr

I would like to learn,
or remember,
how to live.
-Annie Dillard

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
-Anais Nin

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how . . .
We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
-Agnes de Mille

Great spirits have alway encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-Albert Einstein

Adversity is the first path to truth.
-Lord Byron

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted;
the indifference of those who should have known better;
the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most;
that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
-Haile Selassie

Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace.
- Ameila Earhart

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
-William Shakespeare

Think where one's glory most begins and ends, and say, 'my glory was I had such friends.'
-William Butler Yeats

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
with the certainty of tides,
just like hopes springing high,
still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
diggin in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
you may cut me with your eyes,
you may kill me with your hatefulness,
but still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise?
That I dance like I've got diamonds
at the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise.
Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise.
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise.
Into a daybreak that's wonderously clear, I rise.
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.
I rise.
I rise.

-Maya Angelou

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