Ani DiFranco Quotes - Page 12

fate is not just whose cooking smells good, but which way the wind blows

We get a little further from perfection, each year on the road, I guess that's what they call character, I guess that's just the way it goes, better to be dusty than polished, like some store window mannequin, why don't you touch me where i'm rusty, let me stain your hands

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.

I just see a lot of people who are really terrified of the "f-word." A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists.

My feminism has evolved way beyond self-empowerment and I see feminism as a path to peace on earth. The fundamental imbalance that is behind all of the other social diseases is patriarchy. I do believe. As men and women, together, I really long to feel my society evolve its understanding since we're one of the leaders in the f-word. I want us to grow our idea of feminism collectively and get both men and women involved in undoing patriarchy. It's huge. It's a huge job.

If you turn on the TV, you're going to get a certain palate, and if you go looking underneath the surface, there's a whole lot of stuff there that I think a lot of our generation would be really interested in.

I see a lot of young female performers who do not call themselves feminist, but would certainly believe in their own right to self-determination, and wouldn't want anybody to stop them from becoming themselves. They just refuse to recognize the relationship between their lives and those of other women, or feel any solidarity there.

I like to be an inspiration and an example of the idea that you can be independent, and it's no problem, and you can pay your rent, and it's empowering, and it's great. And that's true, but it also takes a really long time, and you have to have a lot of patience and a lot of conviction in why you want to remain independent.

When I was a teenager in the '80s, I was the only girl in the guitar shop. Now if you walk into a music store, it's mostly teenage girls. It's great! It's an expansion of possibilities for young women, finding a way to tools even if they aren't directly handed those tools by adults.

I mean, playing music at home and writing and hanging out with my guitar is kind of medicinal for me, but when I bring the songs to people on stage, it's very joyous.

I turned my pain into art and my hard work into a career. Helping myself has helped others. helping others has helped me.

Vulnerability is something that I negotiate every day.

What we all have to admit to is that one man cannot save us. Unless we start energizing ourselves, all standing behind him with all of the force of our collective power then we can't expect mountains to be moved. And that is not exactly happening, we are a very comfortable population.

I am a thinned-skinned type. I am very sensitive, very emotional. Vulnerability is kind of always a part of my day.

I love to exercise my creativity in many ways but as each year of specialization goes by I feel further and further from my other creative selves. I used to be able to see myself doing many things and sometimes I still long for a job that involves less pressure and grappling with people but, as you say, I am one of the lucky ones so I try to just focus on feeling lucky and carry on!

There are so many things that we have to be very concerned about. But I always come back to feminism. People look at me sideways now and are like, "With everything going on, the destruction of the environment, these endless wars, this capitalism that has a stranglehold on our culture and our world and you're talking about feminism still?"

There is no alternative. A Democrat is a Republican is a big businessman, and we're all consumers instead of citizens. It just manifests in the culture, in the music, in the art. I feel a little panicky about it.

I always try and stay one step ahead of people, not looking like I looked like last week, so I can be as anonymous as possible and part of it is just for me. It is fun to just come up with new and bizarre colors for each area of your body and things like that, but there are some parts of it that I just keep wanting to negate myself. I hate waking up in the morning and recognizing the woman in the bathroom mirror.

I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial, so I'd be hard pressed to feel embarrassed by anything I listen to. Besides, I have a three-year-old, so I don't have time for guilty pleasures anyway!

My main tactic is to focus on the people I respect. The people I think are great people. Do I have their respect? Do I have their support? If the answer is "yes," then I'm doing ok.

I'm pretty much a workaholic, but when you're doing what you love it's hard to think of a reason to stop.

The scary truth is, you have to scratch some veneer off to gauge where the moral fiber really is in certain pockets of society. It's raw. It's scary. But it gives us a place to work with.

People who are just starting out are always sort of coming to me for advice as the example of "independent girl," and lots of people ask, well, how did you get the booking agent or the national distribution or the tours? And I look at them like, "Good lord! Relax!" I mean, how I did it was to not care about it and to not even think about it for years and years. All I thought about was getting the next little gig in the little bar, and I get this sense that people want me to give them the secret formula or the magic trick to make it all happen.

Criticism is hard for me but people find hard to believe because they think I'm very tough, very strident, that I tell everybody where to get off, and how. But I've actually got a really thin skin. I don't know. It's quite pathetic. So, yeah, it's hard for me to take criticism. But I also kind of have this sense of humor on overdrive, so I don't take any of it seriously. So that sort of saves me, the fact that I think it's just all kind of funny.

I feel like we need to understand feminism more as a tool to mediate, counteract, to ultimately defeat patriarchy and restore balance to our government, our culture and our ways of thinking and structuring the world. I think we've had a very "masculine" sensibility for a long time, and I think we need to go back to the roots of social imbalance. I think we have to try to right that first, and from there and all these more pressing issues will follow.