Tori Amos

My ears are huge. If there's ever a problem with a plane I'm on, they could just put me on the wing and I'll land the sucker.

I'm a hard worker. I get my hands dirty.

I have a rule that I don't read my press, but then somebody in the crew will be reading it and of course it's right there, so what do you think I do?

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.

Music is always a reflection of what's going on in the hearts and minds of the culture.

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

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

There are two ways to wake up. You can wake up thinking about what you know, or you wake up thinking and saying 'What can I learn?.' That's a very different approach.

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

My father has a pragmatic mind. He marched with Dr. King in the '60s, and he's very much for women's rights.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other.

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

You'd think that in this age, especially in the 21st century - especially with all the technology and all the discoveries that we've made - that we would figure out how to tackle abuse.

I like cosy, intimate houses.

There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.

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

I've had to keep exploring different ways of presenting the music so I don't repeat myself.

If you have an issue with homosexuality, then it comes to your own fear and your own darkness.

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.

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.

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

Right now, half the world is depressed and they need to be entertained.

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

Shower the world with pink and glitter.

There is a time and a place for things. Sometimes one needs to put a filter on oneself. That can be a good thing.

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

If you think a child is going to be your accessory... it's not like a micro pig. It's not about putting them in front of the television. You need to read to them at night.

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.

There is a phenomenal amount of pressure on women in this industry: they are considered vintage by the time they hit their mid-30s.

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.

Adolescence is that time when I think it can be its the cruelest place on Earth. It can really be heartless.

I'm driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.

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

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

This was a time frame when dance music and clubs were having a real impact on culture, and it had an impact on me.

Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.

I love the classic crooners, but I got that from my mother - she worked in a record store.

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.

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

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

Some of the biggest advocates for feminism seem to believe that in order to feel powerful you have to make another woman subservient, and that is not what feminism is about at all.

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.

People out there must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it's the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves, as I have done.

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 became a mom at 37 and having a child has been an emancipation for me.

Cornwall is one of the most beautiful places, with great people - there's not a great downside to it.

I think having a child can really change you if you're open to it.

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.

Healing takes courage and we all have courage even if we have to dig a little to find it.

Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.

There is a phenomenal amount of pressure on women in this inndustry: they are considered vintage by the time they hit their mid 30's.

An interview will seem very sane to me, and I'll find out that the journalist was laughing out of the side of his mouth half of the time.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.

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

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.

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

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

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

Life is fleeting. It is to be enjoyed.

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

When I was little, my mom tells me, I used to say things like, 'Mom do you hear the string section? Do you hear the string section?' And she would look at me and say, 'No honey, I don't know what you're talking about.'

I would love to compose something for dance before I kick the bucket, and I'm not closed-minded about the dance, or the dance company. I would really just love to collaborate on that.

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

If I was writing songs just for me I'd only play them in my living room, alone.

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.

My childhood was extreme.

When the mothers start to shatter, then everything just comes undone.

If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn't you like to think that's not all there is? That you haven't hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them?

If you sing to the mermaids, they come when you're drowning.

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

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

I have so many different personalities in me and I still feel lonely.

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

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

I don't kid around.

I don't choose to analyze what I have done and I think that is the right choice, because then I won't be spending my time creating.

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

Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.

I want to be an integrated woman.

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

Not everybody wants to have the same career. I think what's difficult is when you have two people that do something very, very similar and they both, say, want the limelight. That's very tricky.

Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you want to be.

Womanhood is a whole different thing from girlhood. Girlhood is a gift...Womanhood is a choice.

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

I'm not like a poker player. I'm not into bluff. My way is to look someone in the eye and tell them the way I'm intending to go. My cards are always on the table.

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

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.

I don't see music as working.

I produce the records. I don't hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will - for commercial purposes.

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

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.

People listen to music the way they want to listen to music.

I have never smoked and have always drunk a lot of water, but cleanse, tone and moisturise every day? No way!

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

I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.

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

At 15, I knew someone whose mother cooked macrobiotic, so I persuaded my mother to go macrobiotic with me.

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.