Ani DiFranco

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.

Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about, but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society.

I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.

I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.

Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.

People need something or someone to fasten themselves to in order to reassure themselves that they are real.

Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

I'd rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.

Someone's got to be interested in how I feel, just because I'm here and I'm real.

There isn't much I have to say, that I wouldn't rather just shut up and do.

If you like it, let it be, and if you don't please do the same.

Taking me seriously is a big mistake. I certainly wouldn't.

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.

Taken out of context I must seem so strange.

If I'm gonna go down I'm gonna do it with style. You won't hear me surrender, you won't hear me confess cause you've left me with nothing but I have worked with less.

In order to keep anything cultural, logical, or ideological, you have to reinvent the reality of it.

They taught me different was wrong.

Just let me go, we have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if you're not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.

Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.

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.

Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.

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.