How Brave You Are




I don't feel a part of any kind of sisterhood. Again, it's the most disappointing thing, where I get criticized by women more than men on how I play the piano. They find it offensive. They find it offensive. I'm just going, well, this is how I choose to express myself, so if you're truly a strong, independent woman, then how could you possibly find me being a strong, independent woman offensive ?


But with God, I think that the energy force of creation feels really pissed off at this usurper that humankind has created is misusing that force, you know ? I think it's really pissed off.


My feelings about men are very different than they were because i don't need to drink their blood like i used to.



sometimes but not very often i journey to this place of bells / i know i'm there when i see blue floodlights and i have no hunger for anything, husks of wedding dresses, horse carts, silver liberty churches--anything that i associate with bells remains unharvested until when i journey to this dimension of bells where i hear them like they have never tasted before.


I'm only monogamous in bed; I'm sharing my thoughts with everyone. I have a very deep imagination : I don't have to do it with somebody to be emotionally invovled. It's beyond the penis and vagina. How many dicks do you have to suck before you realize that you have to draw the line somewhere when you're sharing molecules with someone ?


I dangle carrots to get the meat for my next carnivore experience.


orchards are simple / a peach tree says 'some of me will be juicy and some of me will be dry / i'm not growing for you i grow because that's what i do' / you always hear some person complain and about how dry their peach is and the peach says 'it's not our fault you have no understanding on the proper use for dry peaches'


Even though I had been working my way out of that violent experience I realised that I would remain a victim of it until I recognised the violence in myself. And my willingness to give up my Victims Anonymous badge followed my realising that the withholding of passion and pleasure, from myself, was a form of self-violence.


Okay, let's get to the core of it all. What this means is that Eric has to say 'I am not the man that raped you and I will not accept that concept.' When we make love he'll leave the lights on and say 'look at me, what's my name?' and I'll say his name. And even more importantly, he'll say 'what am I doing? I'm fucking you, say it. And I'd try to say 'you're fucking me'. Then he'll hold me as tightly as he can and say 'And I love you, I adore you, I treasure you'. So I am healing that way. And we're healing, because as you can imagine, I am hardly an easy woman to lie with. Or to love. But I am finally ceasing to see myself as a victim, which is the only way out of all this.


history has recorded some pretty nasty things that have happened to people i think we remember i think it's in our cells and i think it can still hurt sometimes


When I say I want to 'do it' with Jesus Christ it's not just that I want to sexualise Jesus, bring him down to our level, I want to breathe the earth into his lungs. He came from Heaven and we, as women, come from the earth. So it's the idea of soil beneath the fingers, the notion of, 'If this blood is sacred, then drink it'. That's what it's all about.


I do imagine myself being a man a lot. I said to my friend who's a dyke, 'if I had a cock I'd rub you from head to toe' and she looks at me and says 'let's pretend !'. But at least she didn't say 'I've a spare one here.'


I know I'm feeling good about myself because I don't need someone else to feel good about me. It's okay if they don't feel good about me.


A cornflake girl is wonderbread, whereas a raisin girl is wholewheat bread.


I think I'm a magnet for people who want to be alone with themselves. It's not about being afraid to be with other people.


I am making friends as they come out of the piano . . .


Being able to be on this planet is an incredible gift because it is where we can act out things, it's where you can put into a body consciousness. Say when you're flying around and stuff, and you don't have to eat and you don't know what being a rock and roll god is like. You have a whole different set of problems. You don't have avarice. You're not jealous. Maybe you're jealous cause Wow her wings are cuter than mine. But I don't think that it comes to, y'know, I think your whole vision is different.



There was almost a memory that happened with me when I would here her [Billie Holiday] sing. And I would remember things that I didn't even know I had experienced. I'm sure some of you have had that, whether its a scent sometimes a smell or something that you hear. Just for a minute the veil lifts, and she has always done that for me.


I don't play the piano, the piano plays me.

I'm an emotional player, I've never felt anything that moves me as much as my piano. I don't really like people. I prefer my piano to people. it's totally reliable and it's alive. I can hear what it's saying. For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they're dykes, and they're always good fun.


'Me and a Gun' has been my flashlight; the thing that has taken me by the hand and led me down a very, very, very long recovery path.


I hated my name. My body was screaming to be called something, and it wasn't Myra Ellen.


I don't care what you offer me right now : if the fairies don't sprinkle their litle wee on my head, it's not gonna happen. I can't make it happen. Now, say I'm walking down the street, eating a banana, and something happens -- four bars, with a sketchy lyric. If you give me two weeks, maybe I could develop it, just on my skills and craft alone. I'm not telling you it could be great. It might be passable. But there are certain songs I look at and say, I would not change a breath.

The most important thing to me as a songwriter is the breath. The most important thing I could ever say to somebody is, Sometimes I just breathe you in. From where I come as a writer, breathing is sacred. The breath within the measure is sacred.


Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about. I think our generation loves our pain, and if you dare fucking take it away from us, we're going to kill you. We like our pain. And we're packaging it, and we're selling it.


I don't think I preach at people. I think I nail you against the wall and rip your skin off a little before we decide if we're going to put salt or ice cream on you. There is a level of the vampire in me, which is OK. I've got a really nice shoe collection. And then there's a part of me that's a part of me that's a nerdy girl who watched her best friend get the guy she wanted over and over again.


Yeah, because when I hear that someone's been eaten by a crocodile or shark, I just get all gooey. I start salivating. I'm facinated by it. If I had to get tortured by a human being or eaten by a crocodile, I'd take the crocodile any day of the week. The reason is that it's not personal. You were lunch.


Well, I separate; I'm very, very much a divided person--no, that's not what I wanted to say. Yeah, I am divided but that's a sickness.

The girl who writes the songs never has to meet anybody. That's the deal we have together. She doesn't have to deal with journalists. She doesn't have to deal with anybody. She writes the songs and comes through the music but if it comes to anything else--she has a couple of little friends, she has a boyfriend she'll go play with, and a few ice cream coke float buddies, and she has a dominitrix friend who tells her secrets and stuff, but she does not deal with anyone else.

I keep that totally separate. Then there are other sides that are quite willing to deal with everyone else so when we talk so when we talk about the stage side and the way people see me, they don't see the girl who writes the songs except through the music. I don't allow it. This is not hunting season. It's not OK. I don't put her in that position.

Any part of myself that does the interviews and does the other stuff can handle themselves just fine. It's all a bit of a game to them because they don't take it personally. If the songs are getting attacked they deal with it from a different viewpoint. You see what I mean?


The way I see it, the men that I'm with, whoever they are, it's like look, you have to accept that I like ice cream, and I know it shows up on my hips but if you can't accept that, then leave. Go away. Toodles. It is non-negotiable.


That's been our motto through the whole thing : Spicy yogurt unshaved.


there's a stream that runs up in the rockies and it runs into a bigger stream and finally makes it's way to a river but never the ocean and i was thinking about being whole again and that you don't have to make it to the ocean to be whole again maybe you freeze and become a snow witch or maybe a sandwich and melt away and that's o.k. i think


I have a bit of a fun sense of humour that a lot of people don't find very fun. But the kids find it fun because it's like, 'All this shame and all this guilt !' You've got to remember I'm a minister's daughter and I understand guilt and shame very well and I know how it's been used to divide a person because I've been there. When I'm talking about how I see it, it strikes chords in a lot of people that have cut parts of themselves out because they're ashamed. The want to stay accepted by their family so they kept things secret. Well, I sit and say in America, you don't owe your parents that, all you owe them is honesty.


you call me an airy-fairy new age hippy waif, I will cut your penis off.


What's come out of the gangsta rap thing is that the women rappers are reacting against it, it's all coming out from the home and getting discussed, taboos are being broken, which can only be good in the long term. Women have been kicked around since the beginning of time. These guys have got rid of the silent hypocrisy and secrecy, so now it can be sorted out. Progress comes from confronting the unthinkable and unsavory. Widespread child abuse would never have been known about if terrible things were never allowed out in the open.


"I believe in energy, everything is energy. And therefore sometimes magic can be created if somebody is open to letting energy do what it does, instead of being so cynical, that you miss magic happening. I mean, the reason I thank the fairies, frankly, is because I'm not stupid."


Lots of garlic, with a really vanilla oaky buttery smooth Chardonnay, and salsa. A really good salsa, and cornchips. (Tori describing herself)


A lot of times, the animal that bit you, you have to go and commune with that animal to release the poison, to release that bite, to understand the infection that that causes.


When a girl is taking that firewalk into womanhood, a bottle of red wine is almost necessary..


I used to get really pissed off that my life was so dictated by when this Jesus guy was born and when he was dying every year. I felt really resentful that I couldn't get on with my own life because I was so busy with his...

... I had dead eyes; I let go of the things I believed in as a really young kid, and took on what they told me to believe in, and I don't just mean my parents. I had all my beliefs and feelings, all the things that were to do with me, crushed out of me.


people play games when they've got you under the microscope and when they don't understand something I say or an experience that I've talked about, they jump on it and try and make it look silly or insane.


I'm known as that girl who has tea with the Devil. I'm the thing that fundamentalist Christians cringe over. Mothers drag their daughters out of my shows. Because their daughters are going, 'Hey, maybe I don't have to think about these things. Why am I worshipping some dead guy?"


I'll rip your fucking head off if you touch my babies.


you ask any girl on the planet, you know, just the idea of dancing a tango with lucifer : and he dances wonderfully , and just gives you a wonderful kiss, has a delicious honey taste of Bordeaux, i mean come on, it doesn't get any better than that...'


After all the ... you know, the fiery red head behaviour, drawing my lines, making my threats ... I was lying there, feeling incredibly weak. Feeling like there are not enough sold-out shows, like it doesn't matter that every American show is sold out, because I'm only alive when I'm on stage with a piano. The rest of the time I'm just this shell.




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