When we get in a routine we can become zombie-like and shut down.
— Tori Amos
As the sun sets, we've all had those nights where you question your choices and where your life is going.
I wanted to do something creatively, having been a beached whale for many months and nursing my daughter.
I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.
A lot of songs are derivative of each other.
Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.
Cornwall is one of the most beautiful places, with great people - there's not a great downside to it.
I don't see music as working.
I want to be an integrated woman.
There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world.
I don't know if the average person really has faith in Washington anymore.
You can be self-empowered and still learning about how you think about things daily.
I've carved out a career for myself really as a writer.
When I got older, I chose to look at Christianity as another myth.
My father was a preacher in Maryland and we had crab feasts - with corn on the cob, but no beer, being Methodist - outside on the church lawn.
At 15, I knew someone whose mother cooked macrobiotic, so I persuaded my mother to go macrobiotic with me.
I find that in the 21st century, there's not a lot of compassion for what other people are going through or the walk that they have to walk.
Some people say, I'd give anything to be 30 again. Well, I really wouldn't. I didn't enjoy being 30.
Our world is a huge mess right now, and not big enough for masses of intolerant people.
Music is always a reflection of what's going on in the hearts and minds of the culture.
People listen to music the way they want to listen to music.
There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.
After a while, though, you realize that a whole slew of young singer-songwriter piano players are getting compared to you. That's when you feel the passage of time is occurring.
I know people sometimes have this fantasy about Cornwall. But the Cornish are so grounded.
Being able to still make records is a privilege. I don't take it casually.
I don't mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else's object.
I think you need to have people around you whose standard is high and who don't accept anything less.
The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me, troubles me as a minister's daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.
I don't want to give too much ink to foolish men.
I don't kid around.
I'm a conduit for telling people's stories. It's a privilege.
I've been known to throw watermelons, backstage, at people who are giving me news I don't want to hear. But I never aim for the head.
The pop world has really opened its doors.
If you have an issue with homosexuality, then it comes to your own fear and your own darkness.
Sometimes it seems like we're closer to our manicurists than we are our own souls. We have to find ways to get in touch with that and to listen to it and to hear it.
It's fun to write your set list 20 minutes before and keep the crew very much on their toes.
I get tired of wearing the same thing all the time too.
Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.
I am the worst influence. If you can't handle your vices, then I am the Devil.
You don't leave people who can't defend themselves.
I'm not not going to stop giving away what I feel about something.
My husband doesn't know what my songs are about - even when they're about him. He's very British in that way. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't want to be told.
There is an energy that you carry when you're nurturing another life where you're protecting first - and once you know that cub is out of the way of the hunter's gun, you can be a little more daring.
When you don't have people in your life pushing you, can you push yourself?
There are two ways to wake up. You can wake up thinking about what you know, or you wake up thinking and saying 'What can I learn?.' That's a very different approach.
There are older men with younger women but you don't see a lot of older women with younger men. There are some women who have been able to do it but not often.
Some of the biggest advocates for feminism seem to believe that in order to feel powerful you have to make another woman subservient, and that is not what feminism is about at all.
I was two and a half when I first climbed up and sat at a piano.
I don't really cook. There are caterers, and my husband cooks.
I guess my husband is a muse as well.
