I usually get myself into situations that cause sparks. I mean I'm a girl that likes the storms. I love feeling alive, I love walking out in the cold in my bare feet and feeling the ice on my toes.
I like cosy, intimate houses.
I like butter and the people who like butter.
The pop world has really opened its doors.
There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine.
There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world.
People assume that all artists make for terrible business people, but I'm in complete charge of my own career.
For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. I made a conscious choice when I put (the song) 'Me and a Gun' on the record not to stay a victim anymore.
The world that we all knew before, could wake up in feeling safe, ... now it seems that everything has been turned upside down.
So the first job that I got - my father got it for me - he had his clerical collar on, was a gay bar in D.C., it was Mr. Henry's of Georgetown.
Right now, half the world is depressed and they need to be entertained.
I like involved projects.
To me glamour isn't about being sparkly.
For a song cycle to work, you have to feel these things when you hear them and you either have an emotional reaction to it or you don't. The plotline is something that gets woven together in the backstory.
It's [a miscarriage] all very thief-in-the-night. No one really knows what to say. You go into the emergency room, you think you're going to be a mum and you walk out empty. It's all neat and tidy, there's this potential being in your life and you're empty - all cleaned up and put back together, but completely shattered.
I was fascinated to think about a place where men could be the mothers and I thought of my own song-writing and I decided to have a relationship with their daughters.
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.
Pretty is never beautiful.
Adolescence is that time when I think, it can be- it's the cruelest place on Earth. It can really be heartless.
When the mothers start to shatter, then everything just comes undone.
When I got older, I chose to look at Christianity as another myth.
Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.
Tori's my legal name. My niece and nephews, they all call me Aunt Ellen, because I went by my middle name years ago, before I turned 18.
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.
My father was strict, but he recognised my ability and got a lot of flak from the church for supporting me.
