+"I was reading about what was going on in Afghanistan--the way women were being oppressed, the destruction of religious statues. And when I heard that song [Raining Blood], I just imagined a huge juicy vagina coming out of the sky, raining blood over all those racist, misogynist fuckers."
-Tori Amos
-Spin Magazine, October, 2001

+"Those that did this wanted to paralyze our souls, and music has always been an instrument of creating little earthquakes inside people, stirring the heart and keeping us from going numb."
-Tori on the events of September 11

+"All my songs are living thoughts. They have birth certificates. They're alive."
-Tori
-Times Union, 4/5/94

+"Every place you land in life has a reason and a lesson."
-Tori

+ "It's a passionate instrument...a sensual instrument...and um, you can hide men in it..."
- Tori, about her B?ey

+"Not loads of artists find that each time you put out a work do you have this 'fan base' that will say we can't promise to stay with you, but we'll give it a go. You can't really ask for more than that, in that way I'm fortunate because I don't have to bend to the will of what the fad is. If radio doesn't play me, I still have a career."
-Tori
-CNN Interview, August 27, 1998

+"The final step was acceptance, accepting that when I need to rage I need to rage, and when I need to weep I need to weep, and when I need to put on that giggle, and just giggle until I can't stop, no censorship".
-Tori
-Alternative Weekly, 5/31/96

+"I think some people feel like they have to have had some kind of traumatic experience to relate to my music. I don't write like that. Sometimes I see the music more like a Dionysian frenzy. The concept that there are albums that make you happy and albums that make you suicidal - I don't live in that kind of segregated world. That's why being in a fierce calm really holds a frequency for me right now."
-Tori
-USA Today, 1999

+"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."
-Tori

+"I don't own a computer. I have a nine-foot piano in my home to compose my messages. Why would I want a one-foot computer to do the same thing?"
-Tori
-People Magazine, 2/5/96

+"I've been aware of him for years. I've had many a dinner with him. He's always sitting on my shoulder."
-Tori on her imaginary friend, Clunky the purple monkey
-People Magazine, 2/5/96

+"I think I'm a magnet for people who want to be alone with themselves."
-Tori
-BAM, March 1994

+"You know, being somebody else's opinion... most of you creatures out there haven't been exposed (I don't think) to people making comments on your work on a big scale.... What can happen when that happens to a few of you, whether you're writers or musicians or etcetera, you can start to become these opinions. And everybody has an opinion, guys. People will love you, people will hate you, people will say you're not worthy to even make music. People will say you're the most amazing thing there ever was. And in truth, you just have to throw it all out and just know where you stand with yourself, know when you don't have it, know when you do."
-Tori
-Alternative Weekly, 5/31/96

+"There are lots of things I don't sing about. Sometimes I put something in a song, but I don't want to wreck someone's life, so I disguise it a little. I don't believe in censorship, but if someone's going to be hurt, names and places should be changed."
-Tori
-SHE magazine (U.K), 4/98

+"Women are treated very differently down there [in the South]. Southern women come up to me all the time and say, 'Thank you Tori so much for giving us some hope'. It's shocking."
-Tori
-The West Australian, 8/11/94

+"It's not about the music. I mean, they like music as much as anyone. Half the pop stars are not musicians. It's not a slag, but it's something musicians need to understand. Being a musician is a skill. It's not a fashion. Just because you think you're one doesn't mean you're one -sorry, sweetheart. I'm not trying to be vicious here, but I'm trying to give players pride. Because there's a lot of players that will never be on the Top 50 Billboard charts. And there are some great musicians in serious metal bands, where sometimes it becomes a bit tongue in cheek but still they are amazing players. And I think it's having them be aware that being a musician *is* a skill. "
-Tori
--Musician Magazine, 7/98

+"My music is sex, emotion, agression. It's a way to deal with those emotions."
-Tori
-Veronica, May, 1994

+"There's just a moment sometimes when I just go, 'God, I don't know if people realize the musical mind that we lost.' I can't speak of the friend that he was because I didn't know him on that level. But there was a respect from the music side that I had for him. And I feel like I understood what he was doing. And it would make me smile when I heard something of his. I'd say, 'Thank you! For taking me out of this boredom.' And I can't say that now.'"
-Tori on Kurt Cobain
-Hartford Courant, 1994

+"I quickly realized that I had some kind of calling. But, just as quickly I realized that what was most important to me was following my own path--and not the one that was laid down by others."
-Tori
-Women of Rock

+"I'm really interested in what you don't tell me, it's the things we hold back from ourselves."
-Tori
-UCLA Interview, 1995

+"I don't think it's funny if you're hypcritical. I just think you're less of a man or less of a woman if you are."
-Tori
-Spin Magazine, 6/01

+"We all get intimidated for showing ourselves for whatever reason, we think if I really show who I am and somebody goes 'pff' then its gonna crush me, well it's not gonna crush me. It doesn't crush you if somebody does that, somebody will do that...many times. And once you accept that that's not why you're doing it, your doing it because it's your form of expression."
-Tori
-Little Earthquakes video, 1992

+"He [Maynard James Keenan of the band Tool] really is this beautiful guy...and he believes that you can't separate yourself from what you create. I think we both believe that whatever you put out there, the phrase 'Oh, I'm just kidding,' is fuckin' weak. He does not negotiate with his beliefs, and if he's a friend, he's a real friend. He just has this deep spiritual currency."
-Tori
-Spin Magazine, June, 2001

+"There are a lot of people, especially musicians, where they can be bought. They'll sell you up the river. You don't really know who your real friends are. But he's [Maynard of Tool] a real friend. If he's your friend, he's a real friend."
-Tori
-Spin Magazine, 6/01

+"I can't even remember when I started writing, I was always making up my little ditties. So it's kind of a part of my day. As far as the discipline goes, I'm a pretty disciplined person anyway, and I'm pretty ruthless, as far as what stays and what goes in a song. I always listen to my tummy."
-Tori
-Inner World, 3/94

+"Any time I would ever slip, I would put on 'Case Of You,' [by Joni Mitchell] and there is not a song that could move me about the way a woman loves a man the way that song does. I wish I had written that song. I'm living that song, I should have been able to have written it."
-Tori
-Prodigy Interview, 1994

+""I was taught a belief system where there wasn't really any room to discover my own belief system."
-Tori
-WHFS Press, Spring '94

+"I was so confident as a musician, but so unconfident as a girl."
-Tori on her 13 year old self image
-Timeout, 5/8/96

.

+"You should see the album cover--for my hairspray if nothing else."
-Tori on of her 80's flop, Y Kant Tori Read

+"You know, I've never had the same experience with men, they all want such different things. Some men need corn on the cob in bed. That gets them going, buttering corn on the cob! You'll never find that in a book."
-Tori
-Shift, 4/96

+"I have a lot of gay friends who have taught me many things. Because of their experiences, they have taught me how to look at life differently. I want to be very open. I think they have gone through a lot to come out. And I really respect anybody who stands by their truth."
-Tori
-Aquarian Weekly, 2/21/96

+"Having a daughter has made me put my ear to the ground and hear what people are saying. This project [Strange Little Girls] is in response to what I'm hearing."
-Tori
-Rolling Stone, 5/24/01

+"I'm too wacky for most weirdos. Who am I to judge?"
-Tori

+"When people break up because they don't want to be together anymore, you break open the champagne and say 'See you later.' But its different when you just can't be together."
-Tori
-Next, 1/96

+ "I've had a lot of response from the fundamentalist Christians over here. God, I'm going to hell! In the southern states of America they won't play me at all. God was the No. 1 record on US alternative radio for four weeks and they wouldn't play it. It's really funny. I'm the Devil's Daughter down there and I have to chuckle because these guys are missing the point. This is about freedom."
-Tori
-The West Australian, 8/11/94

+"What kind of excites me is that people either love it or hate it."
-Tori on 'Boys for Pele'
-On The Street 1/29/96

+"I think all the boys that write the screaming stuff would write the best love songs.... because they have the most to hide. The guys that are in the most pain are usually the ones with the biggest hearts."
-Tori

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

+"I take that stage and that piano and demon girls come out."
-Tori

+"I've never considered myself to be a great pianist. I'm just a really creative player - voicing and all that stuff. I've never had the chops like the killers. You know, you walk in and you see the killers playing Chopin and yadda, yadda, yadda, and you just go "I'm impressed". And, to some extent, it is impressive. But from a very different place."
-Tori

+"Shoe shopping is a real art."
-Tori

+"When someone asks me if I've found Jesus, I say, 'Yeah, I saw him at a Nirvana concert a couple of years ago.'?It's like, Jesus has got things to do, he's got a ten o'clock.?He's not going to fix things for me, I have to fix things for myself, so I try to have a sense of humor about it and nobody finds my humor very amusing.?We've just got to lighten up on the whole savior bit, folks.?You know, get off the cross, we need the wood."
-Tori
-Spin Magazine, October 1994

+"The piano was very much my identity for a long long time, now I feel like we're partners."
-Tori

+"I've always found it fascinating how men say things and how women hear them."
-Tori -Atlantic Records "Strange Little Girls" Press Release, July 2, 2001

+"It feels like 'Earthquakes,' 'Pink,' and 'Pele' were a trilogy, and now a door has closed. A certain style ended for me. But as long as I honor wherever the music is going, whether or not radio plays it, then I think my audience will still be there. That is the most important thing to me."
-Tori

+"To me the songs already exist, I'm an interpreter for them."
-Tori

+"So sometimes I sing in the shower and they bang next door and tell me to shut up. And I say well that's not really fair. Maybe if you only knew you could pay 23 fuckin' bucks to hear me sing you wouldn't complain!"
-Tori

+"There's a fine line between listening to everything and listening to nothing."
-Tori

+"But yet because I'm different than you, I have every right to play "Claire de Lune" my way, as do you. Why should you play it like me? Maybe you're coming from a different background with a different edge that brings it a different perspective. I don't believe for one minute that Debussy would not want to hear your perspective!"
-Tori

+"I'm known as that girl who has tea with the Devil."
-Tori

+"I find that being a minister's daughter was a great gift because I saw the dark side of Christianity."
-Tori
-CNN Interview, August 27, 1998

+"As I play alone at the piano, I have to honor it."
-Tori

+"I wrote 'Cornflake Girl' because of what Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy inspired. I feel that genetic memory gets passed down. Walker talks about this. Women have a hard time holding their mothers accountable, because mothers have had such a hard time. It's not about blame, but taking responsibility."
-Tori

+"If you're a lame brain, then you're a lame brain. I can't help that."
-Tori

+"I was burned for a witch in another life I'm sure."
-Tori
-MuchWest Interview, 3/29/92

+"I think that we're not encouraged to really go out and explore ourselves. Well, it's OK, it's safe to try things. What is this 'making a fool of yourself'? So what?"
-Tori
-New Music (UK), June 1, 1992

+"Give the kids tools, so they can go build their own houses; not the blueprint of what the house should be."
-Tori
-Keyboard Magazine Interivew, August 19, 1992

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

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

+"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."
-Tori

+"Being a minister's daughter means you get really good poppy seed cake at Christmas time, and you get really wonderful dresses and things made by these really nice little old ladies. And you also get an incredible amount of confusion. But when you're 14 years old, and you don't know what your beliefs are, you're taking on everybody's beliefs around you and you're making them yours. And I'm not about the institutionalized Church. At all."
-Tori

+"The one thing I've never done is follow the trends on the radio. I'm really just the Pied Piper. That's what I do."
-Tori
-CNN Inteview, October 30, 1998

+"Our whole life revolved around the church, so that the only time I had a break from all that was when I would escape into the piano. So I created this whole other world that they [Tori's parents] couldn't get into."
-Tori
-CNN Interview, October 30, 1998

+"The word 'confession,' to me, means needing to be absolved. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not asking people to understand. I'd like to think that I tell stories and sometimes my life weaves through it."
-Tori
-CNN Inverview, October 30, 1998

+"My dad likes my success. He enjoys it for a lot of reasons. Yes, he's proud of me and so is my mom, but I think that ... he likes it that I stir it up, because he has questioned a lot of the things that he preached about for so many years."
-Tori
-CNN Interview, October 30, 1998

+"I like being away from the record company. For me to really create, I have to be away from people who are chasin' it."
-Tori
-Blender Magazine, August/September 2001

+"I was attracted to the wife, who was faceless and nameless. Everyone's grooving to this tune, and nobody seemed to care about her."
-Tori on her cover of Eminem's '97 Bonnie and Clyde'
-Blender Magazine, August/September 2001

+" I was nursing Tash in Florida, and I was hearing a lot of male artists on alternative radio. And some of them really hated women. I thought about my daughter and what these guys were thinking about women. I wanted to build some kind of bridge, and I figured that was the only way to get into the heads of these men."
-Tori
-Blender Magazine August/September 2001

+"I'm not the mother of these songs--the men who wrote them are--but I became a sort of foster mom."
-Tori on the songs on her newest album "Strange Little Girls"
-Elle Magazine, September 2001

+ "The view changes depending on where you're standing. I had the opportunity to flip the script."
-Tori on her cover of Eminem's "97 Bonnie and Clyde"
-Elle Magazine, September, 2001

+ "Words can always hurt and they can heal. Their power is underestimated. I always hear: Well, they are just words, this all is probably not meant that way. But words are weapons. And men know that very well. But they rarely take the responsibilty."
-Tori
-KulturSpiegel, September 2001

+"I believe in freedom of speech, but if you're saying stuff just to shock people, and if you don't believe in it? Then that is what I have an issue with."
-Tori
-CosmoGIRL Magazine, October 2001

+ "Women put a lot of energy into who their man is, what their job is, what stuff they've got. But what if you strip that back and try to understand that those are just things? I don't see a lot of time being put into secrets and shadows and things that live inside our souls - those treasures."
-Tori
-CosmoGIRL, October 2001

+ "Strange Little Girls is about the power of the word. Words are like guns. I've never heard so many women being okay with being demeaned. I don't know if your readers' generation remembers when Gloria Steinem got up and started talking. I was a little girl in the late '60s, but I remember freedoms for women that were hard-won that are taken for granted now."
-Tori
-CosmoGIRL, October 2001

+ "I think a lot of heterosexual men are threatened by the economic power of women. So they put women back into that 'you're my bitch' mentality, where they're fighting each other to get male approval. It took me quite a while to figure out men can't tell me that I am cute or not."
-Tori
-CosmoGIRL, October 2001

+ "You cannot separate yourself from your creation. You can't. You have to be responsible for the shit you put out there."
-Tori
-Spin Magazine, October 2001

+ "As a songwriter a lot of my work has been about frustration, and that's what it was supposed to be about at that time. Because that's what I was going through. Is there a place to write about the experiences that I've been through in the last couple of years? We'll see. Because it's not really about frustration now. There are different things that come up. You can never go back. You can't be that person alone in an apartment bitter and gutted. That's not where I am right now."
-Tori
-launch.com, 2001

+ "When Tash just was born, I listened a lot to the radio, to those alternative American stations. A lot of male artists came by and it struck me how many really hated women. The word bitch was used very often, you know what it's like. I had Tash in my arms and thought she's growing up in a world where men think in such a way about women. I have to do something, I have to build a bridge between both sexes. The only way to do that, was to get inside the heads of men. In this case through their songs."
-Tori
-OOR Magazine (Netherlands), September 8, 2001

+ "I'm going for a military glamour look for my shows. Army colours, but still feminine and strong. I'm loving this look."
-Tori
-Glamour (U.K.), October 2001

+ "If you speak strongly about guns and violence and you've got kitten heels on, people don't know what to make of you. It's funny."
-Tori
-Glamour (U.K.), October 2001

+ "It's great being a mom, it's just everything I ever thought it might be and times a billion."
-Tori
-BBC London Live, September 14, 2001

+ "I have a different faith than I think my father and his mother wanted me to have. I don't have the heaven and hell kind of Christianity aspect - I really like Jesus - I always thought he was a good guy, but I see things a little differently than he does, you know we just have a different style."
-Tori
-BBC London Live September 14, 2001

+ "The religious thing, it's... whether you like it or not, if you're brought up in it it's going to affect you."
-Tori
-BBC London Live September 14, 2001

+ "What is a powerful male? We as women are contributing to this big question, what do we want from them? We want them to be sensitive, and then we want them to go get the gig, go get the job. What happens when they get fired? Are we nurturing or is it a turn off? Be honest. We have to ask, us women, just kind of really look at what is our definition of a powerful man? Because my definition has really changed in the last two years."
-Tori
-BBC London Live September 14, 2001

+"It's taken a few years of a lot of digging, and another moment for me was really kind of pulling back and seeing that now, if my daughter is safe with a man and I feel safe that she's with him, whether it's a friend or whomever, then that's a powerful man to me. When they're a safe harbour, a lighthouse. And if you were to look at them or analyse them you might not think that they're 'powerful men' but I think some of them are sages and have a lot of wisdom and my idea definitely is changing."
-Tori
-BBC London Live, September 124, 2001

+ "Don't you think it's really important now that there's a forum, that we're talking about all sides of what happened September 11 and what led up to it? We need to do some research; we need to think about why is the world where it is? It's so deep-rooted, if we really start looking, and we might not like what we find. But I think we have to, we have to ask the questions."
-Tori
-MTV Comes Together: Artists And Viewers Speak

+ "I guess if we had a few physicists here it could be kinda interesting to see what they had to say. From what I understand matter never dies. It keeps reforming itself. You don't get rid of it. Well I think that that's very similar to the soul. That you don't get rid of it. It keeps expressing itself in a different form, whatever those forms are. But I think, whether you like it or not, you're stuck with your soul. And if you kind of, you know, think it stinks and it smells, then you're probably bumming that you've gotta be with it for the next trillion, gillion, however years, that it just doesn't go away. But people can talk till they're blue in the face and well, tell me that it doesn't make sense, that I think it's weird, then I go fine, maybe it doesn't make sense. But innately I just know. Like when my left hand when I'm playing, when I go to a certain change I know that that's right for that moment. I know that I've had other experiences outside this dyed red head girl's body because I know that. And I can't prove it to you."
-Tori
-BBC, January 11, 1998

+ "Women come up to me and say, 'I know exactly what you're talking about.' Men come up to me and go, 'What are you talking about?'"
-Tori
-Good Day LA, July 16, 1996

+ "You take a man's word, you take his seed. So let's take his seed, let's plant it here, consummation. Man's seed, woman's voice."
-Tori on her album "Strange Little Girls"
-Sonicnet.com Interview, September, 2001

+ "I started singing as a choirgirl. It was called the Cherub Choir and...eh...I was a terrible singer, really, I had a very hard time even though I had good pitch. I was always trying to sound like Robert Plant. And you can imagine being a little girl trying to sound like ... some of my favourite musicians anyway I tried and sound like them. I remember this boy, Kevin Craig, when I was nine, writing a note to a girl called Peggy. And I had this huge crush on him, like huge, I was so in love with him. And he said: 'Tori Ellen sounds like a frog, she's got the worst voice I've ever heard, she should shut up forever.' And I was crushed and didn't sing for like six months until my brother talked me into doing it again."
-Tori
-Canvas Television, July 1, 1998

+ "Once I get a taste of, sort of, the essence of a song, then I go and do research. I mean, I have hundreds of books in the house that I don't necessarily read until I pick one up one day that I've never picked up before and I turn it to page 102, and there's a picture of something that makes me go to another reference book, that makes me go somewhere else, than makes me take a drive, and then I start forming what the language is. It's so much like word association, you're getting an essence, and you're getting a picture on many layers, right? And then you're saying, 'There are millions of words I can choose here so how do you find the right ones?' And a lot of times it's not about being literal, it's about making the essence of this song three dimensional to you, so that she really exists, and she breathes, and she wears perfume, and, you know, what does she look like and how old is she and is she bi-sexual? Is she, you know, on Lithium? I mean, what is she doing?"
-Tori
-Live In Toronto, April 28, 1998

+ "God is a misogynist. When you really spend time and look at things God said, if you have a brain on you, you've got to raise an eyebrow and say this God is a macho pig. I mean, if Sylvester Stallone said this stuff we'd be giving him a very hard time and he has said some of this stuff and we have given him a hard time -- he deserved it. But the point is the Christian god hasn't honoured women. Sorry, the cat's out of the bag and it's just not cool so it's something we have to address because until this century women didn't have a voice. It's not as if you hear about all those great 17th century women composers or painters or whatever. It's not like we've been allowed to have a voice until this century."
-Tori
-Courier Mail Newspaper, December 3, 1999

+ "I can't have discussions about it anymore, I just can't. When someone asks me if I've found Jesus, I say, 'Yeah, I saw him at a Nirvana concert a couple of years ago.' It's like, Jesus has got things to do, he's got a ten o'clock. He's not going to fix things for me, I have to fix things for myself, so I try and have a sense of humor about it and nobody finds my humor very amusing. We've just got to lighten up on the savior bit, folks. You know, get off the cross, we need the wood."
-Tori
-Spin Magazine, 1994

+ "This country has Thanksgiving, does the little Disney Pocahontas bullshit, and they don't really think about, you know, there were 500 (Native American) nations. Every inch of this land belonged to a people. It was genocide. It happened."
-Tori
-Tori and Alanis Chat, August 17, 1999

+ "I refuse to simply accept God's will. I receive a lot of letters from women who write that they've been raped by their father for years, from the time they were little children. Then don't start insulting those women, especially not while I'm around, by saying that it's God's will. And I don't need to hear that it's karma either."
-Tori
-Nieuwe Revu, April 8, 1998

+ "I see no diference between baring a child or a new song. Although I must admit the kick is better having your own baby of flesh and blood. My little girl is 11 months old now. This morning we were on the beach in Cornwall, where I live now, and she tried to grab the ocean in her arms. When she is a big girl she will be a mermaid maybe... When I saw her the first time on the echo she had fins too, in the beginning of pregnancy all babies have fins between their toes. I didn't know that before. Me and Tash have three languages in which we communicate: English, American and music. She will go to an English school, but I'm gonna make sure she will learn how to use bad American language when she is old enough!"
-Tori
-Aloha Magazine (Netherlands), October, 2001

+ "To me a groupie has nothing to do with sex. They want to be seen with somebody. Especially in the states people are travelling with me from city to city. I call them 'ears with feet'."
-Tori
-Aloha Magazine (Netherlands), October, 2001

+ "I have no idea what it is to be followed by hundreds of photographers everywhere I go. When I go out to buy a bottle of milk there is mostly one person saying 'hello' to me and after that I can do further shopping. I am not their possession. Because of my song lyrics many people know what I am thinking about certain things. But about some things, names and places they don't know anything, 'cause I just won't tell."
-Tori
-Aloha Magazine (Netherlands), October, 2001

+ "Right when I had my little girl, my male friends would want to talk to me about what it was like to carry a life inside you, what it was like to be a human house on heels. They would want to know about the feeling of being a host organism. I thought of a place where the men would be the mothers. And that started to take my being a song mother as somewhere similar to being a human mother, having given birth now. I think some of them would be good host organisms-if they could put the vodka and smokes down for 10 minutes. I'm just being funny, but you know what I mean. I don't know if the physicality of it all really would work. But I think the heart, in some of them, was in the right place."
-Tori
-Creative Loafing, October 3-9, 2001
+ "Words are like guns. A person has to take responsability for their words."
-Tori
-Diva Magazine (U.K.), October, 2001

+ "If a woman sings words that were written by a man, she will emphasize some of the words differently. She will give a new frequency to some parts. And thus you can understand how women hear the things that men say. It's a thrilling research project -- it stimulates me. Just the other way round is impossible for me; I can't show you what men hear when we females talk -- not in this life."
-Tori
-Musikexpress/Sounds Magazine (Germany), October, 2001

+ "The animus in me is raspberry swirl, I'm in love with my women friends, but I just don't eat pussy. But I'm in love with them. If I had a different sensibility, then you know I think I could, you know, really fulfill someone down there, where a lot of men in their lives don't. And eating pussy is a metaphor, too - it's about crawling in there, being with their juices, really being with them."
-Tori on Raspberry Swirl

+ "When people ask me, 'What is the show going to be like?' Well, I have no idea until 20 minutes before. What I thought would work maybe six hours prior doesn't work in that city because of events that happened. That could be something joyous like a baby animal being born - who knows? You don't know what it is that's going to affect everybody in that city. It's topical. It changes with the tone of the city. What works in Chicago on one day won't work in Minneapolis the next."
-Tori
-Newsday Interview, October 7, 2001

+ "You just can't expect someone to see it your way. How are we going to be open if we're not able to see different perspectives."
-Tori
-Newsday, October 7, 2001

+ "The unfortunate thing with American youth or Afghan youth is that if they're in a place of hate, they're the same. If only they could see that they're being manipulated by those who make money out of war - these guys on both sides are going to make more money. When will the youth rise up to how they're being manipulated? If you and I are honest today, I believe that Allah and Jesus are weeping for their children because both really and truly are about love. You show me love in this. Either side. It's not about a side. Jesus and Allah are weeping. And if they're weeping, what do you think their mothers are doing? Everybody has a mother. Even invention has a mother."
-Tori
-Newsday Interview, October 7, 2001

+ "The cover was me with the gun. The pig was the inside sleeve. I wanted it to be a Christmas card for my dad. See, he'd been bugging me for years to make a Christmas album with church songs. He's a Methodist minister in Florida. So I said, OK, I'm gonna do a little Christmas card for my dad Madonna and child. He sends a newsletter out to everybody every year, with little pictures of us all, so I said, Here's my little contribution. He didn't use it. The Pig was called Pig, like in Babe."
-Tori on the infamous pig picture from "Boys for Pele"
-Q Magazine (U.K.), November, 2001

+ "In many ways, I think that this country is still rather young. And also the youth of the country. But you know, youth have such a gift because they have resiliance and they have this magic way of making us all want to get up in the morning and see what tomorrow will bring. It's important now that we ask questions. I really think that the great wisdom isn't found in the answer, but in the question."
-Tori
-MTV Comes Together: Artists and Viewers Speak, September 22, 2001

+ "I have one man, three homes and five pianos - that's not too excessive, is it? Cornwall is our main home but it's also where my husband, Mark, and I have our recording studio. I wanted to create a spot that was a little bit difficult for the outside world to get to me. I wanted a place that didn't have all the crazy anticipations that go with the music business - when I walk into the studios in L.A., I can smell the fear. Often in L.A., the studio's fear is greater than their faith - bless their cotton socks. But when I'm in Cornwall the record company never crosses me. There's a real positive energy force."
-Tori
-Woman's Journal (U.K.), November, 2001

+ "We've lived in North Cornwall since 1997, and it's the place we're going to raise our one-year-old daughter, Natashya. I had three miscarriages before she was born, so she's very precious. As a musician you spend a lot of time travelling and living in hotels, so when we get a chance to breathe, we want to make our own food and sit on our own porch and just play house. I love being a hermit."
-Tori
-Woman's Journal (U.K.), November, 2001

+ "Cornwall is a real heart space for Mark. He's very British. He loves the land and all the things that make Britain what it is, from local history to a good pint of bitter. He loves the fact that the Cornish still own the land. when he was a little boy, his family would drive down to the south coast and stay in bed and breakfasts. He has these fantastic memories of English summer holidays."
-Tori
-Woman's Journal (U.K.), November, 2001

+ "We have three houses. I'm restoring a Georgian house in Ireland, and we have a beach house in Florida, but Cornwall is our base. we live in a 300-year-old converted farmhouse a few miles from Bude. When we found it, Mark looked in my eyes and said 'I'm at home here, I understand this place.' I recognized that it was a power spot for him. It's not easy being married to a musician. If you're in a relationship where one person gets an unusual amount of attention, the other has to find a place where you can both take root. So I just figured we all had a much better chance in Cornwall."
-Tori
-Woman's Journal (U.K.), November, 2001

+ "I played the percussion of Cruel in the shower on my excess fat. It sounded really good—it made me feel good when I’d have that next bag of potato chips. I’d say ‘Look, Cruel sounds great in the shower. You eat those chips, girl!’”
-Tori on "Cruel"

+ "Cornwall is so spiritual, too. It's Arthurian country, full of tales of chivalry and wizardry. Travel down the coast to Tintagel and, on the rocky headland known as the Island, you'll find Tintagel Castle, said to be the birthplace of King Arthur. Locals insist it's the true site of Camelot. The cave at the tip of the island is called Merlin's Cave, and Dozmary Pool, at the heart of Bodmin Moor, is where the king's sword, Excalibur, was received by the Lady of the Lake.
-Tori
-Woman's Journal (U.K.), November, 2001

+"I'm obsessed by the sea. For me, writing music is like jumping off a cliff and then deep-sea-diving among new coral reefs. I think women are like water, while men are much more like clay, like earth. Our house is surrounded by farmland, but when you walk out of the front door you can glimpse the sea at nearby Widemouth Bay [U.K.]. I have to know the sea is there. I filmed a video for my single, China, around the cove. I had a piano built out of rocks and I just slipped into the sea as the tide came in."
-Tori
-Woman's Journal (U.K.), November 2001

+"For a songwriter, Cornwall is a very inspirational place to be. Daphne du Maurier based her novel, 'Jamaica Inn', on the coaching inn at Bolventor. During the 19th century, it was a meeting point for outlaws and smugglers. Cornwall is a good place for bad boys and outsiders - there's always been a bit of piracy going on. What a great time in history it must have been, when people were having adventures and breaking away from the authority that was choking them."
-Tori
-Woman's Journal (U.K.), November 2001

+"As I've always told the guys, 'You move the mistress in, you better check your wife's pulse - after you killed her, it's that five minutes when her energy is going to make friends with the women that are still alive.'"
-Tori
-Denver Poster, November 2, 2001

+ "That song [Happiness Is A Warm Gun] has been circling me for a while - yes, since Columbine - but the gun question hasn't gone away for me before or after September 11. Because there are a lot of people on my block that I wouldn't want having a gun!"
-Tori
-Denver Post, November, 2, 2001

+"When I would hear people involved in the gun movement say, 'Look, there's going to be bad seeds,' they let us down by not addressing that access is the problem. Why can you get a gun easier than you can get a driver's license in some states, and why should that be OK without risking the Second Amendment?"
-Tori
-Denver Post, November 2, 2001

+"I'm not against guns. But I am against people pretending they're not what they are - no different than words."
-Tori
-Denver Post, November, 2, 2001

+ "If you asked me in 1992 if we'd be in a place where there was this kind of heterosexual rage against 'bitches' and 'faggots,' I'd have said, 'Are you kidding? We're never going to that place again. No way.'"
-Tori
-Dallas Morning News, November 2, 2001

+ "I liked the idea of a woman's voice singing, 'We wonder where the real men are,' because that question keeps coming up: 'What is a powerful man?' I was surprised to find women who were turned on by the thought of being subservient, women who said, 'I think being dominated can be really sexy.' After hearing that, I just had to sit down and take an anti-inflammatory and start being a sonic archaeologist."
-Tori
-Dallas Morning News, November 2, 2001

+ "You really do kind of learn a lot about a person when you watch and listen to the songs that mean something to them."
-Tori
-Request Magazine, November/December 2001

+ "This might sound kind of weird to you but some people have these impressions of you that's why I don't read the press at all and I try and just stay away from people's opinions. I have people I go to that are pretty gutty and honest with me and will give me a read on things that I respect and think is coming from a fair place. Sometimes I think it's none of my business what people think. Because sometimes people have impressions that are so, you know, they've taken it from an interview. They have no idea that hat's been edited by seven people maybe. They have no idea that I've had 12 interviews that day. It's just a very odd thing, 'Well how could she have said this?' You don't know if I said that! And how it gets colored and shaded, it just becomes very disheartening if you're reacting to that all the time, so you just have to go, 'You know people will think what they think and you cannot control this one.'"
-Tori
-Request Magazine, November/December 2001

+"The idea being if you take a man's word, you take his seed. So, we took the man's seed, planted it in the woman's voice, and that's where the consummation of this project happened."
-Tori on SLG

+ "I really really love Christ, but I'm not a Christian."
-Tori
-Musiqqueen.com rountable interview, November 6, 2001

+"For me on this record [Strange Little Girls], it's true, we crawl behind the eyes of the men, even the men with me, and I hung in their heads for a while. That's true. But the men can crawl back over that bridge, and crawl into the skin of these different women and see and hear how they heard what the man said. And I think that's the gift and I think it's a fair exchange."
-Tori
-Musiqqueen.com Roundtable Interview, November 6, 2001

+ "I don't want to be buried. My Grandmother was convinced I should be burned as a witch and I think that's probably right, that's how I should go. I think fire is cleansing and beautiful. So I definitely want to be cremated and not put in a confined space."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ This isn't Tori's quote, but: "She's very mystical in her demeanor. More like elfish, more like wood creature or a gnomish sex mom."
-RUFUS WAINWRIGHT on TORI :)

+ "I'll never forget the first time I heard about Kate [Bush]. I was playing in a club, I was 18 or 19 and somebody came up to me, pointed their finger and said, Kate Bush. I went, Who's that? I wasn't really familiar because Kate didn't really happen in the States until Hounds Of Love. I was shocked because the last thing you want to hear is that you sound like someone else. Then people kept mentioning her name when they heard me sing, to the point where I finally went and got her records. When I first heard her, I went, Wow, she does things that I've never heard anybody do, much less me. But I could hear a resonance in the voice where you'd think we were distantly related or something."
Q: So you were never influenced directly by her?
"Well... I must tell you that when I heard her, I was blown away by her. There's no question."
Q: Did you sing along with the records?
"Absolutely. But I knew that I had to be careful, so I didn't voraciously learn her catalogue. I left the records with my boyfriend at the time, because I didn't want to copy her."
-Tori on Kate Bush (Q, May 1998)

+ (when asked for Best Song by a female): "Best song by a female artist? Very difficult. I think we should go back in time umm, this is something that a lot of us can agree on and it's not the best, I don't think that's fair but it's potent and it's still potent. umm. Joni Mitchell Blue has resonated with a lot of us and umm, Kate Bush Hounds of Love. These were really ground-breaking records of there time."
-Tori, MTV2 2001

+ Interviewer: "What's the coolest outfit you've worn onstage?"
Tori: "The band bought me this full leopard suit with ears and a tail. I wore it one night onstage. My crew needed cheering up, so i went out in it for the encore. Nothing i wore that night was very flashy, so the paradox of it worked."
-US Magazine, January 2000

+ ""What I consider a powerful man now isn't a guy who has power over somebody or who wants to have power over somebody. For me now, it's somebody who's a safe place, where I'd leave my daughter. It's somebody that's a good listener. That's a powerful man. That's a core thing for this record -- how we as women have contributed to the definition of what is a powerful man."
-Tori
-Rocky Mountain News, November 5, 2001

+ "It's a song about sanity. I usually stand on the nonviolent side of things every time. But with this turn of events in all of our lives [September 11], I can feel myself reaching my breaking point. 'Imagine' is the one thing that can bring me to a place where I can get logical, think, and breathe. Yes, the song is an anthem. But it's also oxygen."
-Tori Amos on her performance of 'Imagine' at a taping for CBS "The Saturday Early Show", September 21st, 2001

+ "I always believe you have to go to the venom for the antidote."
-Tori
-Rocky Mountain News, November 5, 2001

+ "As per normal, everything is getting misinterpreted and everything is getting understood. I try and put out work that creates thought and discussion. Hopefully, I do my research."
-Tori on her album 'Strange Little Girls' -Rocky Mountain News, November 5, 2001

+ "This is the time where you're really challenged as an artist. In New York City the set list is different than it was in Atlanta, because Atlanta's at a different place with this whole thing [September 11]. In Atlanta there are certain songs you can go after. And in New York City there's certain things that if you sing it, its going to mean something different because these people have been where the trains don't run. Atlanta is waiting for the other shoe to drop. They're a little bit more on the counterattack. You know what I mean?? People are in different places with it. And until you walk into the city and read what is being written, you're not aware of the mood."
-Tori
-Seattle's New Tribune, November 6, 2001

+"It's just about passion. I love the idea that when this song [New Age by the Velvet Underground] came out [in 1970] it was part of a new freedom movement. Freedom from this yoke that had been around mankind, womankind - the Martin Luther Kings and Gloria Steinems of the world having cut holes in walls built up in suppression."
-Tori on "New Age"
-The Orange County Register, November 13, 2001

+ "The statement that I have to make is, 'Words can wound and words can heal.' It's based around the fact that in the past few years, in America particularly, there has been a movement toward music that is full of male heterosexual rage toward women and gay men. But I didn't pick up the gauntlet until some of these men said, 'They're only words. I don't know what everyone is going on about.'"
-Tori, on the concept behind SLG
-Vancouver Sun, November 8, 2001

+ "There was a time when I felt immortal, particularly in my late twenties - I think that's the only way you survive them. As a teenager I wasn't so arrogant, I had a healthy respect for nature. But in my twenties, I would do quite dangerous things. I was a real vigilante if there had been an injustice. I'd chase carfuls of men who cut in front of me on the motorway. Now, I no longer feel any sense of immortality and I no longer take such risks. I don't want to die, especially now that I'm a mother. I'd like to live to 80 and be called granny."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "I'm a church ministers daughter and my parents were ferocious in their belief that there is a Heaven and Hell. I was drawn to my maternal Grandfather. He was a haven for me, a lighthouse. A cherokee, his belief in the spirit world was fluid and warm, not scary in the least. Death, in his view, was part of life. We would die but our soul would continue and there was a Great Spirit that touched everything."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "He [Tori's maternal grandfather, a Cherokee Indian] would talk to me about having a relationship with the spirit world; just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. He taught me that I needed to respect this, or I wasn't living life to the full. He was very keen to instill in me a philosophy that was not in conflict with the land. he would say 'you need to be very aware of the laws of your ancestors. Then you will be able to walk the land, and in both worlds.'"
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "Heaven and Hell were not part of his [Tori's maternal grandfather, a Cherokee Indian] vocabulary, except to make fun of them. His ideas created some family difficulties. His daughter [Tori's mother] had married into a family with a very different belief system."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "It's my belief that you ditch the body and all the stuff that made you then goes somewhere else, but I don't know where. Although I don't believe in Heaven and Hell I do believe all our souls go on. Not necessarily on Earth - it's a vast universe after all. I don't know how we would reform, but I think we would find matter and consciousness would take root."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "I've had things happen to me - some health scares, three miscarriages - that have given me a great respect for life, the miracle of it. I have a lot of respect for the realm of death. I was raped once and thought at the time I was going to die. I didn't think I was going to make it out of there alive. The idea that I hadn't had the chance to tell my mother goodbye was the thing that really kept me thinking and focussed and saved my life. Anger in that sort of situation doesn't work. Anger is not what gets you out."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "The three miscarriages were deaths. I had been warned just before the last one that things weren't going well, but I had to do a show in London so, before the show I went to Westminster Abbey, where I lit a candle and said a prayer - in my own way. We all find our own truth in religion, whichever it may be."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "We must not simply wait for death to take us. Assuming that as we get older we don't have anything to contribute is a victim mentality. We don't value our older people in the West. But not all old people necessarily have wisdom. Just because you're old, doesn't mean you're wise. You have to really do the work."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "I don't want to sit on the sidelines and not value the gift of being here. Instead of the idea of time ticking away, the grains of sand running out, I try to think of time as giving me another grain of sand, another gift. So time passing is an accumulation, rather than a diminishing."
-Tori
-Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001

+ "We [Tori and Neil Gaiman] have, I think a creative relationship - for whatever reason it's based on brutal honesty, with a spoonful of sugar. We would rather hear it from each other, rather that the scabs were picked open by one another than to have it done by the New York Times. Anything that they're going to say he's already told me. We've covered all the angles of every argument beforehand, and we know what's coming."
-Tori
-Vox Online, November 2001

+ "Limp Bizkit make great records - we're not coming from the same political stance or from the same perspective on things - but those records speak to a sexual power play, and some of it is dark and it's underground, and it's about wanting to do harm. It's not just 'I want to do her and I've got a big dick.'"
-Tori
-Vox Online, November, 2001

+ "The laws and the rules that go into a four minute or five minute or seven minute song, with sound as an integral part of the creation are not the same laws and rules that go into a three-hundred page work with no sound to fill in the spaces. It's a very different thing."
-Tori on why she will probably never write a book
-Vox Online, November 2001

+ VOX: "Were there any other songs that didn't make the record [Strange Little Girls]?"
+ Tori: "One song was Public Enemy's 'Fear of a Black Planet.' I really respect Public Enemy for their intensity and conviction, but the song really spoke to me. There's that fear for a white woman, on a planet and she's very conscious of what she's faced with - these black men, who may be a potential lover, and the specter of her white father, and what it's going to do to him if she ends up with a black man. The tension, the question of how her father is going to deal with it. It goes far beyond that - it's not a simple question."
-Tori
-Vox Online, November 2001

+ "Heterosexual women shouldn't discount that gay women have views on men that might be very enlightening and help their relationships. I've had deep talks with my lesbian friend, video director Nancy Bennett. She said, 'God, straight women really have to claim their animus.' I said, 'well put.' It's about finding the male within you, instead of pulling on people - finding your own inner power and strength."
-Tori
-Diva Magazine, November 2001

+ "After the third miscarriage, I went through the grieving process again and said, `I've had enough, I can't do it anymore.' You go to the edges of the living world to speak to any god or goddess to have a discussion and make a deal. Within eight weeks of the loss, I had a stomach flu. And Natasha became the stomach flu."
-Tori
-Diva Magazine (U.K.), November 2001

+ "It [Eminem's '97 Bonnie & Clyde'] stared me right in the face: bloody irresistable. How could I not pick up that gauntlet? She had no voice. Women are so sick of the bitch in the truck and yo bitch this and bitch that. She took me by the hand, the ghost of this woman showed me, as she lay dying in the songworld."
-Tori
-Diva Magazine (U.K.), November 2001

+ "He's [Tori's father] taken a lot over the years. One song that upset him the most was Father Lucifer. He was very hurt about that. I said, `Dad, this is not about you. I took drugs, took a journey, a shamanic experience, and I had an affair with Lucifer'. I said this at the Sunday dinner table with the chicken. Everyone put their forks down and went, `Oh no'. but my Dad just went, `Oh. OK then'."
-Tori
-Diva Magazine (U.K.), November 2001

+ "I'd like to think that RAINN is a sort of emergency room. Sometimes you're looking for lawyers because you've got an underage gal who, if she leaves, will be arrested, yet her stepfather's raping her. You walk into the realms of law in certain states. The men and women who're involved in RAINN are gentle, nurturing force. There are so many artists who've been touched by it who are nothing to do with me. It's taken on a life of its own."
-Tori
-Diva Magazine (U.K.) November 2001

+ "You can feel it in your stomach. You can walk down Fifth Avenue [New York City] and smell it. Your senses are filled and the emotion is so raw you have no delusions. I do believe in non-violence... but I became a warrior mother. How can you be rational with the irrational? You want to see fury? Just wait till the soccer moms start marching. Once the body bags for the children are brought up it's game over. If you come after my cubs you give up your rights."
-Tori Amos on September 11th
-London's Evening Standard, November 29, 2001

+ "I think we, as writers, have to [take responsibility for their lyrics]. We can't separate ourselves from what we create. I've heard a lot of people say, 'They're only words.' But words are like guns; they're very powerful."
-Tori
-YM, December 2001

+ "I'm not the sort of person who gets played at parties or weddings. I mean, you know, you mention my name and you get an eye roll, until, of course, you're jumping off a bridge."
-Tori
-The Sunday Times (U.K.), December 2, 2001

+ "Someone asked me today about the issue of giving money to somebody like Eminem by covering his song. I wanted to say, do you think the piddly-squit amount they get from that matters to them? That is not the issue. When people are dancing to words about cutting women up, something needs to be said."
-Tori
-Time Times (U.K.), December 18, 2001

+ "The one thing my father was very good at was dealing with people who've lost someone. Everyone is impossible to find when you've hit rock bottom. That's when you know who the real quality people are. Dad wasn't just doing it to drum up business. I could see him and he really had a passion. He did get me to play at funerals, though - I was cheaper than the organist."
-Tori on her Father
-Sunday Express (U.K.), December 16, 2001

+ "It's [a miscarriage] all very thief-in-the-night. No one really knows what to say. You go into the emergency room, you think you're going to be a mum and you walk out empty. It's all neat and tidy, there's this potential being in your life and you're empty - all cleaned up and put back together, but completely shattered."
-Tori
-Sunday Express (U.K.), December 16, 2001

+ "I was fascinated to think about a place where men could be the mothers and I thought of my own song-writing and I decided to have a relationship with their daughters."
-Tori Amos on "Strange Little Girls"
-Scotland on Sundays, December 2, 2001

+ "You say what you want -- that's what I say."
-Tori
-The Times-Picayune, October 30, 2001

+ "What a song [Happiness is a Warm Gun], written by a man who had no idea he was going to be taken down by one."
-Tori
-Times-Picayune, October 30, 2001

+ "What a song [Happiness is a Warm Gun], written by a man who had no idea he was going to be taken down by one."
-Tori
-Times-Picayune, October 30, 2001

+ "I mean 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' is very much this Frank Zappa-inspired, nine-minute sort of a back-drop for the Second Amendment argument, a song written by a man who was later killed by a gun. It was just something that I thought needed to be talked about especially after the San Diego shooting happened earlier this spring. And there's a thread between 'I Don't Like Mondays' and 'Happiness is a Warm Gun.' There are many songs however that I looked at that I just couldn't contain, couldn't hold, couldn't find my way in."
-Tori
-RollingStone.com Interview, October 4, 2001

+ "['Rattlesnakes'] wasn't part of my life when it came out, and it's become this little song that was able to look into a woman and how she thinks and feels better than how I've been able to look into women sometimes."
-Tori
-MTV.com/VH1.com interview, October 5, 2001

+ "We really don't know what the show's going to be that night; I sneak around behind curtains and get a vibe of the audience and the city I'm in."
-Tori
-MTV.com/VH1.com interview, October 5, 2001

+ "I adore Neil Young's music, and adore what he is as an essence. However, how this song [heart of gold] affected a lot of guys in my group was pretty consistent. And I was going, 'No, a definition of a heart of gold is not a doormat, guys, somebody who is just going to take you back every time you hurt her because she loves you.'"
-Tori
-Slamm, October 31-November 13, 2001

+ "No matter what people's comments were about [Eminem's '97 Bonnie & Clyde], there was one thing that was missing. And that was people wanting to know about her -- how she felt."
-Tori
-Slamm, San Diego's Music Magazine, October 31-November 13, 2001

+ "I'm persnickety sometimes. And that should make you feel safe. You know that I've got your back. If the vikings are coming and raiding us -- and I don't mean the football team -- if you feel that blade hit the back of your neck, you know that I'm down. That, to me, is a heart of gold. That's a friend: ferocious."
-Tori
-Slamm, San Diego's Music Magazine, October 31-November 13, 2001

+ "The world would be different if guys could carry a life inside of them. If they were a house on heels and could feel all that fragility, it would be a totally different world."
-Tori
-The Record (New Jersey), October 5, 2001

+ "I remember waving a copy of Sergeant Pepper's in my father's face and saying, 'This is what I'm going to do!"'
-Tori
-Irish Independent, Late 2001

+ "When I was 10 I heard Robert Plant and wanted to give him my virginity. I thought it was like sharing peanut butter and jelly and holding hands!"
-Tori
-Irish Independent, Late 2001

+ "Me and a Gun is about forgiving myself. And as I was writing that song I realised the biggest mistake I made was not seeking help from people who understood. Nobody was there for me the night it happened. I just cut off the experience, not knowing that in doing this, I was letting it take control of me inside."
-Tori
-Irish Independent, Late 2001

+ "The other thing about Under the Pink is that Atlantic wanted to leverage me out in the middle of the project so Eric and I wouldn't be in control of it. I threatened to burn the tapes."
-Tori
-Blender Magazine, March, 2002

+ "At one point, engineer Paul McKenna said to me, 'You know, Tori, this record's [Under the Pink] missing something.' I said 'Oh, Ok.' And within 48 hours, I had this horrible argument with a waitress."
-Tori
-Blender Magazine, February/March 2002

+ "When I'm listening to music, I don't always anazlyze it and put it under the X-ray machine. I can just listen and enjoy something. But once I was taking this project [Strange Little Girls] on board, it really became like getting a hold of the architects' blueprints and sitting with them, as a fellow architect, and seeing how they would resolve things. It's very different from some of the choices I've made in my own work. So I kind of saw ways of doing things that I haven't before."
-Tori
-Performing Songwriter, January/February 2002

+ "You as a songwriter, whoever you are, have to really align with the idea of 'What is your purpose?' Some songwriters' purpose is to make people laugh, and they're magical at it. That is their gift. That's not everybody's gift. It's a special one. It's very tricky to do that. Some songwriters paint almost like sonic canvasses for people to step into, to escape the television set. Some artists tap into that place in the heart and can walk with sorrow and walk with you in all the trenches, and that's their gift. And all of these gifts, I feel, have their place now. Not only were the two towers split wide open, but we were, and our emotional self has been. So there is a need for any kind of emotion, whether it's fear or anger or sadness or escape - all of it."
-Tori
-Performing Songwriter, January/February 2002

+ Performing Songwriter: I've read several articles saying that the frivulous pop music of the past few years will lose its popularity in the wake of the attacks.
Tori Amos: Yeah, but then who's going to entertain the troops in tight jackets and panties? I just don't see Ani DiFranco doing that gig. Geri Halliwell does it very well.
-Performing Songwriter, January/February 2002

+ "Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers and has been a huge influence in my life. His book American Gods is right on the money as far as I'm concerened. Gods from other cultures that were brought over by the settlers and then abandoned and ended up as morticians somewhere, or gas station attendants."
-Tori
-Performing Songwriter, January/February 2002

+ "I have a repsonsibilty to give all of my being [while performing], which I make a commitment to."
-Tori
-Performing Songwriter, January/February 2002

+ "You're always going to see the world differently if you pee standing up."
-Tori
-Scotland on Sunday, December 2, 2001

+ "In the States before September 11 there had been a lot of material about where women are getting butchered and rape is glamorized. A lot of malice that heterosexual men in America were having towards women and gay men. And after the killing of Matthew Shephard [the young gay man murdered in Wyoming, 1998] it all started to escalate. The phrase I was hearing a lot was, 'They're only words. I don't know what everyone's going on about.' At a certain point you have to pull back and say 'Gentlemen, you are doing yourselves a disservice.' I mean I knew that they were doing it because they were in over their heads. But if you're going to start slinging around the first amendment and say 'I can say whatever I want because I'm protected by this', then when Oprah Winfrey comes and says, 'You're talking about butchering and chain-sawing women, what is your comment?' You can't just say 'They're only words'. We're talking about being a racist and hating someone because of their sex or their sexuality. So I said to my husband, 'I might just have to take their words.'"
-Tori
-Scotland on Sunday, December 2, 2001

+ "The truth is that anybody who exercises power, whether it is a partner, a government or a religion, only wishes that the others remain fools."
-Tori
-Action Magazine (Austria), November 2001

+ "That's the greatest compliment I've received [Eminem fans hate her cover of '97 Bonnie & Clyde]."
-Tori
-The Times (U.K.), December 18, 2001

+ "I've always liked tech-heads [as in her husband, sound engineer Mark Hawley]. It's that mental sexy thing. We come from very different backgrounds. He's a Brit and I'm an American. Some things don't translate. For example, in the States, if a waitress is a bitch, you deal with it. Here [Cornwall, England], you don't want to cause a stir. I address stuff. And with him, you know, it's all underneath."
-Tori on her husband Mark Hawley
-High Life, (British Airways), November 2001

+Once, when Tori's father felt the then head of the record company was not giving her a good enough deal, he stormed on in:
"It was years ago, but he went up, took his Bible, marched in and said they were cheating his daughter. He threw the Bible at my boss and he reversed a few things. That's really my dad. He can be quite the champion."
-Tori
-High Life (British Airways), November 2002

+ "There are times when you miss playing with musicians you respect. And there are times when you love the freedom that improvisation gives you. When you're alone, you can change up even before your hands start moving, even before your brain can. You can just say, 'Oh, not working. Moving to another song. Gone. Next.' There is a freedom in that if you use it to your advantage."
-Tori
-Newsday, October 7, 2001

+ "You just can't expect someone to see it your way. How are we going to be open if we're not able to see different perspectives."
-Tori
-Newsday, October 7, 2001

+ "I believe that Allah and Jesus are weeping for their children because both really and truly are about love. You show me love in this. Either side. It's not about a side. Jesus and Allah are weeping. And if they're weeping, what do you think their mothers are doing? Everybody has a mother. Even invention has a mother."
-Tori
-Newsday, October 7, 2001

+ 'The world would be a different place if guys could carry a life inside of them."
-Tori
-The Record (New Jersey), October 5, 2001

+ "At first I tried to play poker with every god from every religion. To negotiate with them. I walked to the edges of this dimension to ask, what do I have to do for which of you in order to keep a baby? I waited to see if any of them would show up to talk to me. The Islamic God? The Christian God? Any god would have done: just give me the child! But no, they were all busy playing golf."
-UK Times Magazine
-September 22, 2001

+ "Right when I had my little girl, my male friends would want to talk to me about what it was like to carry a life inside you, what it was like to be a human house on heels. They would want to know about the feeling of being a host organism. I thought of a place where the men would be the mothers. And that started to take my being a song mother as somewhere similar to being a human mother, having given birth now. I think some of them would be good host organisms-if they could put the vodka and smokes down for 10 minutes."
-Tori
-Creative Loafing, October 3-9, 2001

+ "Neurotic is something that is not part of my musical life-it's part of my dealing with the outside world. Are you familiar with the Chinese horoscope? I'm a Leo cat...If you understand that creature, you know it's really about refinement and things being achieved at a level where you go, 'Okay, we've achieved yumminess here.' "
-Tori
-Washington Post, November 2001

+ "The one thing that comes up for me at the minute is what they can do with heart surgery now - my mum has just had an amazing procedure on her heart, which a few years ago would not have been possible. What they can do with a heart surgically is amazing, but with the internal workings of the heart we have not really made that many strides. We have forgotten to prioritise that."
-Tori
-Virgin.net Interview, 9/11/01

+ "I have a lot of respect for the people that come to my shows, when they respond to an artist, when you can see that happen, then you know that there is something special there. It is a great thing."
-Tori
-Virgin.net Interivew, 9/11/01

+ "We as women have our books and our journals and our photographs to document our relationships. I found that a lot of men have CDs as their documentation of their lovers, of when they lost their jobs, things like that. And I started to think, 'Wow, this is their language.'"
-Tori
-Vancouver Sun, November 8, 2001

+ "I would watch my grandfather and see how he would read people without making them feel undressed. You read a person like you read a map. It's an emotional map. And that's what you do with each city: Find the vortex, tap into it and work with the land itsel. If you want to have a show that speaks to those people, then you can't presuppose what they are going to feel."
-Tori
-Vancouver Sun, November 8, 2001

+ VOX: Do you think you'll ever write a proper book, in long form? Tori: No! I understand my art form. I'm comfortable with what I do.
-Tori
-Vox Online, November 2001

+ "I don't mean to sound like a lunatic. But songs to me are alive. They don't have physical bodies, but their essence is similar."
-Tori
-USA Today, September 26, 2001

+ "For those like me who loved Kevyn the person, the heart now weeps as if made of water color. Earth has lost yet another light, but perhaps, he has joined the masters who paint our sunsets."
-Tori Amos on the death of makeup artist and friend, Kevyn Aucoin
-ToriAmos.com

+ "You know the gay guy that was murdered horribly [Matthew Shepard]. We did 'Merman' for him because doing that in a church was, I felt, a very important thing to do mainly because a lot of the gaybashing is done by godfearing people. So we were bringing in that thread to the place that had seeded a lot of the prejudice and violating judgement because it really is - to say 'We don't accept you because you are gay or we don't accept you as a woman because you are a whore and we deemed you a whore because you slept around and didn't save your body for the man who we, as the male patriarchy, have sanctioned for you.'"
-Tori
-Get Rhythm, October 2001

+ "Wisdom is something that you just don't have in your teens and your twenties. That's not what that's about. You have things that we don't have, that we carry somewhere maybe, as a memory. But you just have things that we don't have, and we have to value that. And we have things you don't have. And how great is that?"
-Tori
-The Harvard Crimson, October 26, 2001

+ "...I think that the greatest thing that the Christians could do is say, 'We cut out sexuality, we made it a bad thing, and we divided the Marys.' We have to honor both of them, the Magdalene and the Mother Mary. The Mother Mary was a sexual being; she had children through sex. Mary Magdalene had great wisdom. She wasn't just the 'Whore of Babylon.'"
-Tori
- "Choirgirl Hotels, Faeries, and a Healthy Dose of Individuality," Iowa State Daily, 1998

+ "It has been so long since I had a good pizza. I could really use one...I like it simple, Margherita and a thin crust. Pizza and piano are amazing."
-Tori
-Virgin.net Interview, September 11, 2001

+ "As a songwriter a lot of my work has been about frustration, and that's what it was supposed to be about at that time. Because that's what I was going through. Is there a place to write about the experiences that I've been through in the last couple of years? We'll see. Because it's not really about frustration now. There are different things that come up."
-Tori
-Launch.com, September 17, 2001

+"You can never go back. You can't be that person alone in an apartment bitter and gutted. That's not where I am right now."
-Tori
-Launch.com Interview, September 17, 2001

+"The words that people use, 'followers', 'fans' - they're people, and a lot of them have an intriguing story. But many of them don't feel it's as worthy of being told. Why is that? The ideas people have, observations they have, and because they might just not be extroverted or command attention, they don't get to share their gifts."
-Tori
-Red Direct (U.K.), September 2001

+ "I was fortunate this time, I had a really joyous pregnancy. I wasn't confined but I did change my life because that's something the doctors thought I had to do. I learned to sit on my egg like Horton (a Dr. Seuss character)."
-Tori
-Red Direct (U.K.), September 2001

+ "I've been a little worried about straight men lately - some of them are like, bonding together to subjugate women and gay men. What is the power in this bitch/faggot thing? If people want to play the power sex thing, the fetish thing, whatever... that's been going on with erotica and porno for a long time, but I'm talking about the malice, the degradation and the wanting to harm. The meanness."
-Tori
-Boyz, September 15, 2001

+"Gay guys taught me how to be a woman. I was working in the clubs when I was 14, 15, 16, which is when I ran into Joey McDonald and Ray, and they'd try to teach me how to not give it away for free: 'Where's your dignity as a woman?' And they'd check my beliefs. 'What kind of woman do you want to be like?' And I'd say 'I'd want to be a rock god.' 'No, no, you really don't want to be that.' Then I thought I wanted to be Sammy Jo from Dynasty and they'd say 'You don't want to be that either.' Joey saw another path for me, 'Where you're not dependent on men for your power. I'm not bringing you up to be discarded.'"
-Tori
-Boyz, September 15, 2001

+"I'm cool with whatever she [Natashya, Tori's daughter] becomes, I just want her to have a good sense of self respect."
-Tori
-Boyz, September 15, 2001

+"Peope are buying women getting violently raped to get off. That's not pornography. Pornography used to be erotic sex. Violence has now become equated with pleasure."
-Tori
-Alternative Press Magazine, October 2001

+"I'm at this stage where, as I think about it, I'm becoming fulfilled just as a woman. So much of the time is you're the daughter of somebody, or the wife of somebody, or the friend of somebody, or the mother of somebody, you're always trying to find your girlhood to partnerhood to adulthood, and its nice to just have womanhood I'm enjoying finally not having to be the seal throwing the ball on my nose. What's the next trick out of my hat?"
-Tori
-Alternative Press Magazine, October 2001

+"Should any part of my music offend you, please do not close your ears to it. Just take what you can use and go on. I'm a musician and a woman, I don't know which one comes first."
-Tori
-Women Who Rock, Fall 2001

+"While I was ready a long time ago [to have a child], I wouldn't have made a good mommy."
-Tori
-Alternative Press Magazine, October 2001

+"I realized you cannot put her [Tori's daughter, Natashya] needs and your needs first at the same time. There is no negotiating on that one. I didn't have the patience before to get baby behavior. You have to watch them every second. And it takes a lot to play blocks for five hours. Parenthood isn't for everyone. For some people, it's animals or traveling or being out on the ocean. Whatever it is, there's that thing that opens up these windows for you where everything lines up."
-Tori
-Alternative Press Magazine, October 2001

+"It's not my intention to have more children. Look, some women are great homemakers. I'm no good at that. I'm a crap cleaner; I'd get fired. But I can fucking bring home the bacon. I'm a musician. This is what I do. I'll be a better mom if I can continue to be a musician. That's my passion."
-Tori
-Alternative Press Magazine, October 2001

+ "She's a French Resistance women whose sister was killed. She went to the underground after the death of everyone she knew. Shes calling on certain powers, no different than the ones Himmler and the Nazis were calling on, only they used the dark forces. Our French Resistance woman knows myths and is calling on power and working on alchemy."
-Tori on the 'Raining Blood' character from the album, 'Strange Little Girls'
-Alternative Press Magazine, October 2001

+ "I don't know what my daughter's choices will be in twenty years--any of our daughters could be these strange little girls."
-Tori
-Elle Magazine, September 2001

+ "I hate it when people develop bad associations with my songs-like if they can't get it up. Because I'm with you, man! I want you to do it! I'd be there with a hand-pump cheering you on if I could!"
-Tori
-New York Magazine, September 10, 2001

+ "By the end of it -- once they masks have come down and they see who each other really is, not the fantasy of who each other is -- then, they decide that they don't know why... 'cause there's enough love, but there's not enough something else and they don't know what that something else is. So, they part. And, that's why it's only 'A Sorta Fairytale'."
-Tori, on Scarlet's Walk
-KIMN web site, 8/22/02 + "When I sing it now [I Can't See New York], I can't see the feeling of that day. I can't see the feeling that the world had for New York that day. Now, when we're the most hated nation in the world. And only two years ago, we were the ones being attacked. You have to understand that the reality of this when we were the victims two years ago and now we're seen as the aggressors how could our spiritual mother be so misrepresented?"
-Tori, The Dallas Morning News on April 18, 2003

.Go back to the Garden.

---

+Many of the quotes and images on this page were taken from Elizabeth Perry's "Tori Amos Quote of the Day" and The Dent, respectively. Thank you!+