Ani difranco quotes

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

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.

Some people wear their smile like a disguise. Those people who smile a lot, watch their eyes. I know 'cause I'm like that a lot. You think everything's ok, and it is . . . 'till it's not.

Virtue is relative at best, there's nothing worse than a sunset when your driving due West.

and half of learning to play is learning what not to play and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say and she's trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove she crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home and it's enough just to look around and to know that she's not alone up up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple but god's work isn't done by god it's done by people

I'm sounding out the silence, avoiding all the words.

We get a little further from perfection each year. I think that's called character. I think that's just how it goes.

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

To split yourself in two is just the most radical thing you can do

Self-Preservation is a full-time occupation.

The way I play guitar is very, very hard and I bloody myself incredibly without the tape. And the nails are my picks.

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

I am 32 flavors and then some.

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

God help you if you are a phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying past

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.

I always feel I have to take a stand, And there's always someone on hand To hate me for standing there. I always feel I have to open my mouth, And every time I do, I offend someone, somewhere.

My country tis of thee, to take swings at each other on talk show TV.

I sing sometimes for the war that I fight, 'Cause every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

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

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

TIME is not a thing that's ours to lose.

You rhapsodize about beauty, and my eyes glaze. Everything that I love is ugly. I mean really, you would be amazed. Just do me a favor, it's the least that you can do, just don't treat me like I am something that happened to you.

Love sets fire to your schedule, And then calls an end to time.

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.

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

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

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

How come I can pick my ears but not my nose?

I envy your ignorance, I hear that it's bliss.

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 negotiate with chaos for some sense of satisfaction.

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.

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 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.

Up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple but god's work isn't done by god it's done by people

Then I show up steady ready and proud and I find I've forgotten how to talk out loud. Isn't it just like you to bring me to my knees?

Let's show them all how it's done, let's do it all imperfectly.

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.

Goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine. And the little plastic castle is a surprise everytime.

My life may not be something special But it's never been lived before.

Someday you're going to get hungry and eat most of the words you just said.

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.

There's a paradox in every paradigm.

[The 'corporate takeover of people's lives'] also accounts for a lot of homogenization of culture. There are fast food restaurants everywhere. Every place tastes the same.

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

I don't hate being compared with female musicians. I don't mind that at all. I have no problem with seeing connections between women's work.

They say that the truth will set you free But then again, so will a lie... It depends if you're trying to get to the promised land Or if you're just trying to get by.

We barely have time to react in this world, let alone rehearse.

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.

Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

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

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.

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

If you don't ask the right question, every answer seems wrong -

But as bad as I am, I'm proud of the fact that I'm worse than I seem

Privilege is a headache, that you don't know that you don't have.

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

And thoughts of no other man but you could possibly get through the picket lines to enter into my mind.

Love isn't over when the sheets are stained.

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.

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

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 just hope it was okay, I know it wasn't perfect, I hope in the end we can laugh and say it was all worth it.

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

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

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.

I was attracted to a lot of different art forms - dancing, painting. But there's something about music that people hold so close. It's such a powerful art form, and that's why I live for it.

I will not be afraid to let my talent shine.

Freedom and democracy, That's the word from Washington every day. Put America to sleep with warm milk and clichés, And people are expendable along the way.

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

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

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.

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.

Maybe we are both good people who've done some bad things.

We are wise, wise women. We are giggling girls.

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

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 try to laugh at whatever life brings.

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

What bugs me is that you believe what you're saying. What bothers me is that you don't know how you feel. What scares me is that while you're telling me stories, you actually believe that they are real.

I mean, I think it's hard enough to find somebody you can stand for more than ten minutes, so, like, you shouldn't narrow your options.

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

There's a crowd of people harbored in each person There are so many roles that we play.

Emptiness has its solace in that there's nothing left to take.

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.

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

They taught me different was wrong.

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

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.

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

Love was always the goal, and my point every step of the way was that nothing is wrong with love, no matter what flavor it comes in.

In a man's world, I am a woman by birth and after 19 times around I have found - they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth.

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.

It's not important to be defined, it's only important to use your time well.

We have to really be intentional right now about holding the media accountable, and taking back the discourse and terms of discussion. It's been hijacked.

Science chases money, and money chases its tail, and the best minds of my generation cannot make bail.

I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman army, But I can envision the mediocrity of my finest hour.

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

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

Smile pretty and watch your back

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 have earned my disillusionment.

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 who fought for this...

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

What doesn't bend, breaks.

I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.

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.

Life is a sleazy stranger, who looks vaguely familiar; flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar.

Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.

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

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.

I love all those great 'f' words - feminism, folk music.

I think I'm a very solitary person. To actually not be anonymous is a bit claustrophobic for me.

I can't wait to get back to New York City where at least when I walk down the streat, no one ever hesitates to tell me exactly what they think of me.

Like how could you do nothing, and say, 'I'm doing my best.' How could you take almost everything, and then come back for the rest? How could you beg me to stay, reach out your hands and plead, and then pack up your eyes and run away as soon as I agreed?

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.

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.

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

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

I am still praying for revolution.

Lying in bed, you know, you don't seem so tall.

People talk about my image like I come in two dimensions, like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind, like what I happen to be wearing the day that someone takes my picture is my new statement for all womankind.

I hope progressive ways of thinking will permeate the "mainstream" more and more in the coming years. Goddess knows we have endured a very long spell (thirty plus years) of regressive thinking and hyper conservativism dominating our culture and national discourse. It necessitates risk taking and rule breaking by people in all walks of life to swing that pendulum back though.

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