Ani DiFranco Quotes

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.

...words are some of the most powerful and important things I know....Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger--and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.

You've decided to love me for eternity, I'm still deciding who I want to be today.

I had a little bit of resistance to the idea of taking energy away from my work, and the baby comes along and, lo and behold, that's exactly what happens.

Words are hotter than flames. Words are wetter than water.

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

A good brain ain't diddley, if you don't have the facts.

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.

If more people were screamin', I could relax.

Who says I like right angles? These are not my laws, these are not my rules.

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'll walk the plank and I'll jump with a smile, cause if I'm gonna go down I'm gonna do it with style.

Feel free to listen, feel free to stare.

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

I still define myself by the places that I've been.

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.

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?

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

I am not a pretty girl. I don't want to be a pretty girl. No, I want to be more than a pretty girl.

Those who call the shots are never in the line of fire.

When I was like sixteen, I was a total chick I had big hair. I was seen as this attractive girl, and I would get all this attention. And then I just cut off my hair, and I quit playing that game.

If a politician is running in your local community who's pro-choice, who's feminist in their thinking, get behind them. Send them some money! If you have no money but have time, lick stamps!

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

The stronger I am in my personal life, the more energy I have to look outward, to address my society.

and I try to draw the line but it ends up running down the middle of me most of the time.

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.

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!

Love isn't over when the sheets are stained.

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

I don't always feel lucky, but I'm smart enough to try.

In any marginalized community, whether people identify themselves or not affects us all.

Life is a B Movie: it's stupid and it's strange, it's a directionless story, the dialogue is lame, but in the 'he said she said' sometimes there's some poetry, if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally.

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

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.

Change the narrative, change the laws.

You broke me bodily. The heart ain't the half of it, And I'll never learn to laugh at it In my good natured way. In fact, I'm laughing less in general, But I learned a lot at my own funeral. And I knew you'd be the death of me, So I guess that's the price I pay.

But in the garden of simple, where all of us are nameless, you were never anything but beautiful to me.

You've already put more than enough energy into worry. That's all women have been allowed to do, historically.

I noticed with older songs that I perform that I'm coming from a different place with them now...it mutates the vibe and even the meaning of the same words when you have a different spirit, if the person singing is different. I like that, to be able to sing an emotionally wrought song from a more centered place, or to sing an eager, youthful song from a more experienced place. It kind of colors the songs differently, and it keeps them fresh.

I would rather have these things weigh on my mind. At the end of this tunnel of guilt and shame, there must be a light of some kind.

If you want to challenge the system, don't go to bed with it.

I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.

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.

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.

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.

It can be very frustrating and very deflating to be constantly defined and described by other people, so I've stopped reading anything written about me, and I find it much healthier. I just sort of concentrate on what I do and don't worry too much about that.

There's this brutal imperial power, that my passport says I represent. But it will never represent where my heart lives, only vaguely where it went.

No one's gonna sympathize when we crash, they'll say you hit what you head for, you get what you ask.