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.
Ani DiFrancoSquint your eyes and look closer I'm not between you and your ambition 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 Cause someday you might find you're starving and eating all of the words you said.
Ani DiFrancoWhen all you can think of is your own personal problems, you have nothing to give to your society. If you're trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from, you can't go march on Washington.
Ani DiFrancoI 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.
Ani DiFranco