Tori Amos Quotes

Healing for me is being able to sit next to the butcher and say 'Yes, I’m sitting next to the butcher now,' instead of saying 'there is no butcher'.

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

You don't have to justify everything. Being pissed off is just absolutely okay.

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.

I don't allow challenges to trip me up.

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.

God sometimes you just don't come through, Do you need a woman to look after you?

When they say take from my body, I think I'll take from mine instead. Getting off, getting off while they're all down stairs.

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

I've never felt anything that moves me as much as my piano. I'm an emotional player. I don't really like people. I prefer my piano to people. It's totally reliable and it's alive. I can hear what it's saying.

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.

Neil [Gaiman, creator of the comic Sandman, featuring the Amos-based character Delirium] believes that faeries have gone beyond cool. They've transcended cool. I just think alternate realities make you a good writer. If your work is any more than one dimension, you believe in faeries. I'm sure I'll start thinking now about all the people I know who don't believe, that I quite like. We can still go have a pint. Not the Chardonnay, though.

The last thing I want to be known as is 'The Girl Who Got Raped'. The big turn around you make in your head is from victim to survivor.

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

My favorite saying is, 'If it's too loud, turn it up.'

I used to get really pissed off that my life was so dictated by when this Jesus guy was born and when he was dying every year. I felt really resentful that I couldn't get on with my own life because I was so busy with his.

If you jump, you best jump far.

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

There's a side to this industry that nurtures divas who can't write. It's a big business.

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

I'm really into moderation. Too much of anything will harm you in the end. Too much sugar. Too much pasta. I'm into drugs as a teaching tool, which is why I only take hallucinogenics. I mean, it's not like I've never done cocaine, but, on the whole, if I can't see dancing elephants then I'm not interested.

Nothing's gonna stop me from floating

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

I've always seen the songs as having a consciousness. Since I was two-and-a-half they would come to me from nowhere. I never thought that I was conjuring them by myself, and I was always grateful they would come and visit... They've always been very much alive. They don't have a physical body like we do but there seems to be an awareness.

I'm a daughter of a minister and I love chasing the Dark. That which is hidden. I like licking it like ice cream

The sense of loss is such a tricky one, because we always feel like our worth is tied up into stuff that we have, not that our worth can grow with things we are willing to lose.

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

Anything a wife should do, I'm terrible at. Anything a mistress should do, I'll try.

I like involved projects.

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

She's been everybody else's girl, maybe one day she'll be her own.

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.

You don't know the power that you have with that tear in your hand

My fear is greater than my faith, but I walk the missionary way.

I had a very strict upbringing with my dad and was very close to my mum, who was extremely loving.

I don't feel I'm as good a mum as my mum was.

On some of my darkest days, Lucifer's the one who comes and gives me an ice cream.

I think everyone understands grief, the journey it takes us on, whether it's the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a disappointment. Some people don't deal with it, the power of it. Some do. Some feel the weight of it and it informs their choices. I've had to open up to grief in different contexts.

Don't give up. Don't listen to these foolish critics that are so small minded they don't get it tonight.

Women shouldn’t deny their dark side. Sometimes those demons are frightening and sometimes they’re beautiful. You’ll have to approach them. Drink a glass of wine with them, take them for a walk on the beach, examine yourself.

I've got enough guilt to start my own religion.

Strange, i thought i knew you well, thought i had read the sky, thought i had seen a change in your eyes.

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

The most important thing to me as a songwriter is the breath. The most important thing I could say to somebody is, 'Sometimes I just breathe you in.'

I think there's a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life, and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer.

I like butter and the people who like butter.

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don't fit into boxes.

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.