Top 77 Tori Amos Quotes

The key things are about power and about growing up and realizing as you grow up that there are consequences for the choices you make, especially when you get seduced by power.

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don’t fit into boxes.

I get painted quite a bit as a tragic figure because of some of the stuff that’s happened in my life.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other.

For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they’re dykes, and they’re always good fun.

You know that saying, bad things don’t happen to good people? That’s a lie.

I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. We’re both Leos, we understand each other.

There’s a side to this industry that nurtures divas who can’t write. It’s a big business.

I think even in a good marriage, especially if you stay together long enough, there are going to be events that happen.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that’s slightly different in order to get inspiration.

Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that’s slightly different in order to get inspiration.

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 wanted to do something creatively, having been a beached whale for many months and nursing my daughter.

I get tired of wearing the same thing all the time too.

I’ve carved out a career for myself really as a writer.

I know I’m an acquired taste – I’m anchovies. And not everybody wants those hairy little things.

In our minds, love and lust are really separated. It’s hard to find someone that can be kind and you can trust enough to leave your kids with, and isn’t afraid to throw her man up against the wall and lick him from head to toe.

I am the worst influence. If you can’t handle your vices, then I am the Devil.

I don’t want to give too much ink to foolish men.

To me glamour isn’t about being sparkly.

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

I don’t kid around.

Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine, we can become zombie-like and shut down. It’s about discipline. You have to push yourself.

My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I’d crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.

My childhood was extreme.

I think there’s a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer.

Life is fleeting. It is to be enjoyed.

Parenting is not for everybody. It changes your life. Especially when they’re little.

I can see how the young girls really get hurt when their moms are critical, or vice versa when they’re overly critical of their moms. It can be so painful.

I’m a musician first, a food-lover second, a dirty mouth with feet, and a girl last time I checked.

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.

My brother was a fantastic cheerleader for my development as a musician. He was almost 10 years older than me and would really push me to develop as a songwriter.

I’ve got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I’d like even more.

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.

I’m a classic emerald green Sixties Jaguar that nobody can own, but my husband is allowed to drive.

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

After a while of getting jerked around, you realize what the business is really made up of.

Our world is a huge mess right now, and not big enough for masses of intolerant people.

I was very close to my mother as the youngest of three. She was my playmate.

When I play live, it’s a conversation that we’re all having with the song, and the audience… their response and relationship with the songs is as valid as my relationship with the songs.

There were times that I needed to go to battle, but how I went to battle wasn’t always the best way in.

I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it.

Romance is important to me, and to have a romance with your husband takes a bit of doing. The key is to make sure your partner misses you. That means you have to take yourself away.

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.

Things go wrong all the time; you can’t be precious about it.

I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom’s family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car – it was the late sixties – and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.

Being stylish is about enjoying your life and expressing yourself and your inner light.

As the sun sets, we’ve all had those nights where you question your choices and where your life is going.

I don’t feel I’m as good a mum as my mum was.

Even if everything else is downplayed, I’ll wear good shoes.

You don’t leave people who can’t defend themselves.

My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.

You can be self-empowered and still learning about how you think about things daily.

I know people sometimes have this fantasy about Cornwall. But the Cornish are so grounded.

Some people say, I’d give anything to be 30 again. Well, I really wouldn’t. I didn’t enjoy being 30.

The pop world has really opened its doors.

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.

Many people lock a part of themselves away. It’s a bit sacred.

Being in your forties – any woman who isn’t there yet, I just have to say to you: Euphoria is coming to you.

It’s been a thrilling journey – I have had to really learn that an orchestra is an entity – it’s a creature. I have been calling it the dragon and the conductor is the dragon tamer. And you just have to… ride and don’t let go and you will be fine.

My father was strict, but he recognised my ability and got a lot of flak from the church for supporting me.

I don’t really cook. There are caterers, and my husband cooks.

I like cosy, intimate houses.

I think you need to have people around you whose standard is high and who don’t accept anything less.

When we get in a routine we can become zombie-like and shut down.

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

There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine.

A lot of the carols were not as you hear them now.

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.

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 was two and a half when I first climbed up and sat at a piano.

I’m really quite happy to say that in my early 40s, I wake up feeling sexy, and I can’t say I felt that way in my late 20s.

Being able to still make records is a privilege. I don’t take it casually.

Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.

I started playing the piano when I was about two and got a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore when I was five. But I left when I was 11.

Guys would sleep with a bicycle if it had the right color lip gloss on. They have no shame. They’re like bull elks in a field.

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.