Ani DiFranco
Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.Collection: Anger
When I first started writing songs and being very explicit, it was hard, but one of the main things people respond to in my writing is that 'just say it' attitude of my songs. There really is nothing personal or private; it's all universal, if you can just find the courage to be open about your life.Collection: Attitude
Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there's nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.Collection: History
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.Collection: Anger
Art is why I get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know I don't think its fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.Collection: Morning
I'd rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.Collection: Famous
I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Poetry
I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.Collection: Strength
Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about, but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society.Collection: Society
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.'Collection: Relationship
Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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.
There isn't much I have to say, that I wouldn't rather just shut up and do.
Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.
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.
Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.
Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot.
I don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do then survive.
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.
Patriarchy is a fundamental imbalance underlying society And it's one we rarely address because it's so universal. But as I get older, I see that peace is a product of balance.
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.
I'm searching, as we all are, for ways to feel good about myself. Certainly, looking in the mirror doesn't do it!
We have to be able to criticise what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if your not trying to make something better, than as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.
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.
Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked 'other.'
Having more exposure is kind of a bittersweet thing for me, honestly, because it's nice to have a little more job security in life now.
It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.
I've been a long time coming, and I'll be a long time gone. You've got your whole life to do something, and that's not very long.
You can't start with imbalance and end with peace, be that in your own body, in an ecosystem or between a government and its people. What we need to strive for is not perfection, but balance.
They taught me different was wrong.
In order to keep anything cultural, logical, or ideological, you have to reinvent the reality of it.
I have something to prove, as long as I know there's something that needs improvement, and you know that everytime I move, I make a woman's movement.
My songs are just little letters to me.
Taken out of context I must seem so strange.
Taking me seriously is a big mistake. I certainly wouldn't.
If you like it, let it be, and if you don't please do the same.
Someone's got to be interested in how I feel, just because I'm here and I'm real.
People need something or someone to fasten themselves to in order to reassure themselves that they are real.
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 basically get stereotyped a lot in terms of being a girl and writing 'chick' music for teenage girls or something. I think, if anything, the press kind of, because of my gender and my age, tends to kind of relegate my work to this sort of special-interest group. It's part of the cultural dynamic, I guess.
I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.
A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous 'girl power' sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it's a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.
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.
I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial.
I've never had a very closely connected family. My parents split up when I was young and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way.
I'm a little hibernating animal. Anonymity is one of my favorite things. I mean, that's why I moved to New York when I was like 18, because there, there are just so many people that there's no one and you're just lost. You're completely invisible and I find that very liberating.
I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.
It's great being your own boss, but then, you know, you make your own mistakes, you know, and you own them. You know, so it's empowering, and it's also humbling along the way.
I really have been enjoying performing more lately than I have in a long time and you know, it's all about that sort of centered feeling that I have now. You know, thanks to, not just my kid, but her father before her. You know, I have a kind of a grounding through them that I really relish, and I think is also good for my work, you know.