Words matter. These are the best Ani DiFranco Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
You can’t start with imbalance and end with peace, be that in your own body, in an ecosystem or between a government and its people. What we need to strive for is not perfection, but balance.
Being a parent has taught me a lot of things already, you know, though it’s only been a year and half, and has made me address parts of myself that I would otherwise live in comfortable denial of, or you know and – you know, for instance, my self-loathing.
I think I’m a very solitary person. To actually not be anonymous is a bit claustrophobic for me.
There isn’t much I have to say, that I wouldn’t rather just shut up and do.
It can be very frustrating and very deflating to be constantly defined and described by other people, so I’ve stopped reading anything written about me, and I find it much healthier. I just sort of concentrate on what I do and don’t worry too much about that.
I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.
Taken out of context I must seem so strange.
I’m not one of those people who has an act.
These days, my main guitar amps have been Magnatone. They’re beautiful. Magnatones have actual tremolo, which I recently learned about guitar amps. Often what guitar amps call vibrato is really just a volume Up and Down. But Magnatone has a true vibrato, which is pitch bending. And so, it’s just a lush sound.
Pop stardom is not very compelling. I’m much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there’s no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There’s no, like, ‘I’ll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.’
The stronger I am in my personal life, the more energy I have to look outward, to address my society.
Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked ‘other.’
I had a little bit of resistance to the idea of taking energy away from my work, and the baby comes along and, lo and behold, that’s exactly what happens.
Men make angry music and it’s called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they’re angry and militant.
I hate it when people don’t recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men’s work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal – men’s writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.
Feminism is not only for women It’s something everyone can participate in, and evolve together, as the first step in the right direction. I see feminism as a tool to achieve that balance and peace.
My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it’s very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.
God forbid you be an ugly girl, ‘course too pretty is also your doom, ’cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.
I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.
Art is why I get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know I don’t think its fair that I’m living for something I can’t even define.
Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot.
Why do you think I write these feminist songs, to try and teach myself to respect myself. You know, it’s not because I’m a hero.
Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there’s nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.
If you like it, let it be, and if you don’t please do the same.
I basically get stereotyped a lot in terms of being a girl and writing ‘chick’ music for teenage girls or something. I think, if anything, the press kind of, because of my gender and my age, tends to kind of relegate my work to this sort of special-interest group. It’s part of the cultural dynamic, I guess.
I don’t care if they eat me alive, I’ve got better things to do then survive.
I’ve been a long time coming, and I’ll be a long time gone. You’ve got your whole life to do something, and that’s not very long.
I was attracted to a lot of different art forms – dancing, painting. But there’s something about music that people hold so close. It’s such a powerful art form, and that’s why I live for it.
A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don’t want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous ‘girl power’ sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it’s a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.
It’s great being your own boss, but then, you know, you make your own mistakes, you know, and you own them. You know, so it’s empowering, and it’s also humbling along the way.
We have to be able to criticise what we love, to say what we have to say ’cause if your not trying to make something better, than as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.
Music has as many roles as people make it.
When I first started writing songs and being very explicit, it was hard, but one of the main things people respond to in my writing is that ‘just say it’ attitude of my songs. There really is nothing personal or private; it’s all universal, if you can just find the courage to be open about your life.
Patriarchy is a fundamental imbalance underlying society And it’s one we rarely address because it’s so universal. But as I get older, I see that peace is a product of balance.
When all you can think of is your own personal problems, you have nothing to give to your society. If you’re trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from, you can’t go march on Washington.
In order to keep anything cultural, logical, or ideological, you have to reinvent the reality of it.
It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there’s me.
Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.
I’d rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.
I did a lot of work with myself over the course of being pregnant and the first few months of being pregnant. It’s nice, the pace of being pregnant; it gives you a long time to not just germinate a baby but germinate the mother that you’re gonna be.
I don’t know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven’t met any, and I’m kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.
They taught me different was wrong.
People need something or someone to fasten themselves to in order to reassure themselves that they are real.
I’ve been collecting some more high-end guitars. I have an old Martin D28 from the ’60s, a beautiful, classic Martin that I know I played on ‘Mariachi.’
