Ani Difranco Quotations

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.

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

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

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 don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do then survive.

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

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.

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.

Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot.

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

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.

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.

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

I have something to prove, as long as I know there's something that needs improvement, and you know that everytime I move, I make a woman's movement.

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

Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.

Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there's nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.

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.

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.

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

Taken out of context I must seem so strange.

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

Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.

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

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

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

My songs are just little letters to me.

When I look down, I miss all the good stuff when I look up, I just trip over things

God help you if you are an ugly girl, 'course too pretty is also your doom, 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.

Cause to me, it's, there's nothing that's personal and private, it's all universal. There's no experience that I have ever had that's unique. And the fact that there is just certain stuff that we share but don't admit to and don't talk about. You know, what is that about?

Here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors who daily provide women with a choice, who stare down a threat the size of Oklahoma City just to listen to a young woman's voice.

Here's a toast to all those people living on the pine ridge reservation under the stone cold gaze of mount rushmore

we thought we left possession behind but truth is i was yours and you were mine

we thought we left possession behindbut truth is i was yours and you were mine

Squint your eyes and look closer. I'm not between you and your ambitions. I am a poster girl with no poster. I am thirty-two flavors and then some. And I'm beyond your peripheral vision, so you might want to turn your head. 'Cuz some day you are gonna get hungry, and eat all of the words you just said.

Maybe I'll live my whole life just getting by. Maybe I'll be discovered; maybe I'll be colonized. You could try to train me like a pet, you could try to teach me to behave, I'll tell you that I haven't learned it yet, I ain't gonna sit, I ain't gonna

you can doubt anything if you think about it long enough cuz what happened always adjusts to fit what happened after that

you can doubt anythingif you think about it long enoughcuz what happened always adjusts to fit what happened after that

We're all rehearsing for the presidency. I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman-army.

One of my rules is: Never TRY to do anything. Just do it.

Too much is how I love you, but too well is how I know you.

What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to.

We are taught to view pain as an enemy, not a teacher. But pain is the right hand of growth and transformation. Pain is in the history of all human wisdom.

I wonder what you look like under your t-shirt. I wonder what you sound like when you're not wearing words. I wonder what we have when we're not pretending...

I don't take good pictures 'cause I have the kind of beauty that moves.

I just don't know any other word than "feminist" that describes a person who believes women are people.

The windows of my soul are made of one-way glass, don't bother looking into my eyes if there's something you want to know, just ask

I walk like I'm on a mission 'cause that's the way I groove. I got more and more to do and less and less to prove.

The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women can do... birthing naturally, as most women do around the globe, is a superhuman act. You leave behind the comforts of being human and plunge back into being an animal...

The fundamental imbalance that is behind all of the other social diseases is patriarchy.

I sincerely believe patriarchy to be at the root of all of our social diseases and feminism, it's antidote, to be a prerequisite to peace on earth. feminism provides an alternative way of thinking and structuring things that focuses on and prioritizes relationships and de-emphasizes hierarchy, separation and domination.

We are wise women, we are giggling girls. We both carry a smile to show when we're pleased, we both carry a switchblade in our sleeves.

When I look down, I miss all the good stuff And when I look up, I just trip over things...

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've been saying the Occupy Movement has got the ball rolling, and now we need to take the fight to the great indoors!

When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong; they taught me different was wrong.

I'm aware enough, I guess, of American labor history.

I am getting nowhere with you and I can't let you go and I cant get through.

The world owes us nothing; we owe each other the world.

The bathroom mirror has not budged, the woman who lives there can tell the truth from the stuff they say and looks me in the eye- says do you prefer the easy way? No? Well ok then, dont cry.

I don't need anyone to hold me, I can hold my own.

I believe the act of giving birth to be the single most miraculous thing a human being can do and it is surely the moment when a lot of women finally understand the depth of their power. You think it can’t possibly be done, you think you can’t possibly take the pain, and then you do-—and afterward you look at yourself in a whole new way. If you can do that, you can do anything.

They can call me crazy if I fail, all the chance that I need, is one-in-a-million and they can call me brilliant if I succeed.

Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked 'other.'

I think the music industry, for instance, is such a huge, multibazillion-dollar industry and it's become very, very savvy. There's a very short grace period in which actual human rebellion or resistance can thrive before it's co-opted by these huge companies. And all of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general.

I love my country, by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right. Where so many cunning sons and daughters, our foremothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter, came through hell and high water so that we could stand here, and behold breathlessly the sight; how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light. Why can't all decent men and women call themselves feminists, out of respect for those that fought for this?

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.'

I think if we can't use the word feminist, if it's some kind of taboo or dirty word, or means you're ugly, or you're angry, or you're not dateable [laughs], then you've just reduced the language by a whole concept.

There are so many things that we have to be very concerned about. But I always come back to feminism.

I know my mind is made of matter but I need to know exactly what is the matter at it's core? Because my heart is just a muscle and simply put, it's sore.

Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear.

Vulnerability is something that I negotiate every day.

You've got your whole life to do something, And that's not very long. So why don't you give me a call When you're willing to fight For what you think is real, For what you think is right.

We're led by denial like lambs to slaughter, serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water.

One thing I do find in the "lost" generation or something is a kind of abhorrence of history, you know, like it's boring, dumb, or just not interesting. I think it's terribly interesting if you can get your head around how it relates to where you're standing right here and now.

...when you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance, you have to believe that mercy has it's own country and that it's round and borderless...

When I need to wipe my face, I use the back of my hand, And I like to take up space just because I can, And I use my dress to wipe up my drink. I care less and less what people think.

When you sit right down in the middle of yourself you're gonna wanna have a comfortable chair.

spring is super in the supermarkets and the strawberries prance and glow never mind that they're all kinda tart and tasteless as strawberries go meanwhile wild things are not for sale anymore than they are for show so i'll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty it takes more than eyes to know

Maybe you can keep me from never being happy, but you're not going to stop me from HAVING FUN!

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

we can't afford to do anyone harm because we owe them our lives each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs our enemies are the very air in disguise you can talk a great philosophy but if you can't be kind to people every day it doesn't mean that much to me it's the little things you do the little things you say it's the love you give along the way

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

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.

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

My mother was a feminist, and she gave me some tools of self-possession and self-empowerment, but now that I have lived here for forty-three years, it's, like, whoa, there is just so much more to do, other than become myself. I'm still talking about it. I still drop the P-word, "patriarchy," on unsuspecting people in everyday conversations.

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.

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 seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial.

As any mom knows, having a baby is an extremely creative act and to love and create a baby, it's on par with any other creative act that we could come up with.

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.

My political mission is as acute as ever. For me, in addition to kind of looking at the world and trying to engage in my society politically, having the kid around sort of makes me check in with myself. I think you're all busy trying to fix the world, but what about yourself?

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.

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.

I knew naturally as a child not to forfeit my creativity to a world that's all laid out for me. I'll look at everything around me and vow to keep in mind that alla this is just someone's idea. It could have just as well been mine.

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.

If you think you know what I'm doing wrong well you're gonna have to get in line...

I've been trying to learn how to not be so conflicted about things like my own anger. I've always had a place in my music for my anger as a way of compensating for not having a mechanism to express it in my everyday life. So I've been trying to be more true to myself, and that helps me to chill out a little bit. But politically, uh-uh. No.

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.